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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



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By SAMUEL SMITH HARRIS, D.D., LL.D. 



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dignity of 0£an 

Select Sermons 



7 

SAMUEL SMITH HARRIS, D.D., LL.D. 

LATE BISHOP OF MICHIGAN 



EHt'tfj a iWemorial aiitiresss 

BY 

RT. REV. HENRY C. POTTER, D.D., LL.D. 

BISHOP OF NEW YORK 




CHICAGO 
A. C. McCLURG AND COMPANY 
1889 



THE LIBRARY 

OF CONGRESS 



3/ 

HwxJJs* 



Copyright 
By Sallie P. Harris 
a.d. 1889 



TO THE READER. 



At the request of many friends I have prepared 
for publication this volume of my father's sermons. 
As its preparation has been a solace to me, I hope 
it may prove a consolation to those who have so 
sincerely mourned for him. To my father's friends, 
Bishop Henry C. Potter and Rev. Dr. Fulton, 
of New York, Gen. A. C. McClurg, of Chicago, 
Hon. James V. Campbell, Rev. Dr. McCarroll, 
Mr. Sidney D. Miller, and Mr. John H. Bis- 
sell, of Detroit, I am deeply indebted for their 
untiring interest and assistance. 



SALLIE P. HARRIS. 

Detroit, February, 1889. 



CONTENTS. 



INTRODUCTION. By the Honorable James V. 

Campbell, LL.D 13 

MEMORIAL ADDRESS. Sermon by the Right 

Reverend Henry C. Potter, D.D., LL.D 47 

Sermon I. 

Shepherdhoou 79 

He that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the 
sheep. — St. John x. 2. 

Sermon IT. 

The Dignity of Man . 93 



And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness : 
and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over 
the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, 
and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God 
created he him. — Gen. i. 26, 27. 

Sermon III. 

The Indignity of Sin 10S 



But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul : all 
they that hate me love death. — Prov. viii. 36. 



viii 



CONTENTS. 



Srcmorc IV. page 

Redemption 122 

And thou shalt call his name Jesus : for he shall save his people 
from their sins. — St. Matt. i. 21. 

Sermon V. 

Eternal Life 137 

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and 
believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall 
not come into condemnation ; but is passed from death into 
life — St. John v. 24. 

Sermon VI. 

The Signs of the Times 151 

The Pharisees also with the Sadducees came, and tempting 
desired him that he would show them a sign from heaven. He 
answered and said unto them. When it is evening, ye say, It 
will be fair weather : for the sky is red. And in the morning, 
It will be foul weather to-day : for the sky is red and lowering. 
O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky ; but can 
ye not discern the signs of the times ? — St. Matt. xvi. 1-3. 

Sermon VII. 

Home 163 

God setteth the solitary in families. — Ps. lxviii. 6. 

Sermon VIII. 

My Neighbor .175 

If ye fulfil the royal law according to the scripture, Thou shalt 
love thy neighbor as thyself, ye do well : but if ye have 
respect to persons, ye commit sin, and are convinced of the 
law as transgressors. — St. James ii. 8, 9. 

Sermon IX. 

Business 189 

And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, 
and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you ; 
that ye may walk honestly toward them that are without, and 
that ye may have lack of nothing. — 1 Thess. iv. 11, 12. 



CONTENTS, ix 

Sermon X. page 

Repentance 201 

From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent : for 
the kingdom of heaven is at hand. — St. Matt. iv. 17. 

Sermon XL 

Sons of God 212 

But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the 
Sons of God, even to them that believe on his name : which 
were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the 
will of man, but of God. — St. John i. 12, 13. 

Sermon XII. 

Hope 222 

Beloved, now are ye the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear 
what we shall be : but we know that, when he shall appear, 
we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And 
every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even 
as he is pure. — 1 John iii. 2, 3. 



Sermon XIII. 

Self-Sacrifice 231 

Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his 
life for us : and we ought to lay down our lives for the breth- 
ren. — 1 John iii. 16. 

Sermon XIV. 

The Only Gospel for the Poor 243 

Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and show John again 
those things which ye do hear and see : the blind receive their 
sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf 
hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel 
preached to them. — St. Matt. xi. 4, 5. 

Sermon XV. 

A Christmas Message - . . 256 

In him was life; and the life was the light of men. — St. 
John i. 4. 



Entrotiurtioiu 

BY THE HON. JAMES V. CAMPBELL, LL.D. 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 



Introttuitum* 1 

TT would be impossible, in the space allowed by 
«*- an introduction, to prepare anything which 
could be properly called a biographical notice ; 
but most readers like to know something about 
an author whose writings they are to read, and 
especially where he is a great teacher, to whose 

1 The appearance of this Introduction with Bishop Potter's 
Memorial Address may call for explanation. It was prepared 
by request, just after the funeral of Bishop Harris, in view of a 
possible immediate publication of the volume of sermons ; but 
it seemed to the writer, as to others, that no one could intro- 
duce these sermons to the public so gracefully as an associate in 
the House of Bishops, whose relations with Bishop Harris were 
not only affectionate and intimate, but confidential. Bishop Pot- 
ter, at once, on being asked, agreed to perform this friendly ser- 
vice, suggesting, nevertheless, that there would be an advantage 
in presenting clerical and lay views together. Soon afterward 
the Standing Committee of the Diocese of Michigan invited him 
to deliver the address at the proposed memorial service, which 
was held on the twenty-second day of November, 18S8. The re- 
sult was the Memorial Address published in this volume, which 
presents the character of Bishop Harris so truly and so tenderly 
that nothing more could be desired ; but at the courteous pro- 
posal of Bishop Potter, who said he had purposely avoided cover- 
ing the same ground, this Introduction is retained. — J. V. C 



14 THE DIGNITY OF MAN 

teachings they are invited to listen. To furnish 
some such information, it is not necessary at this 
time to trace the life of Bishop Harris back to 
childhood or even to early manhood. His life 
was eventful ; but rather for its varying phases 
than for any personal adventures or strange inci- 
dents. He was a soldier, a lawyer, and a clergy- 
man, before he ceased to be a young man, and 
he was but in middle age when his career ended. 
In each of his life periods he was a man of note, 
and his earlier experiences made their mark upon 
his character, while they broadened and strength- 
ened his mental faculties. His work as a bishop 
was made easier, as well as more effective, by his 
training in different methods and his experience 
in varied affairs ; but his new life had so far as- 
similated the elements of what preceded it, that 
it became a complete and harmonious whole, — a 
ripened product, and not a compound of various 
ingredients. It is therefore safe, and more con- 
venient for the purposes of this volume, to begin 
any sketch of his career with his latest develop- 
ment, which is the one that produced all the work 
that will remain as his monument, and — what is 
much more important — shaped that strong and 
symmetrical personality which made the truest 
greatness of the noble man who so impressed 
himself on all who knew him. 



INTRO D UCTION. I 5 

After an early and somewhat precocious liter- 
ary graduation, and an admission to the bar by 
special legislation because of his legal minority, 
Bishop Harris followed what to a young man of 
spirit, surrounded as he was, became inevitable, 
and was a soldier in the Southern Army. He 
served through the war honorably, and gained a 
reputation for humanity and magnanimity as well 
as bravery. His subsequent career at the bar was 
almost phenomenal in its rapid success. He was 
eloquent, laborious, and mature and wise beyond his 
years, and had already reached a large practice 
and a large income when he gave up the certainty 
of professional eminence and entered the ministry, 
w 7 hich offered no inducements but an opportunity 
for self-sacrifice and devotion. 

But when he began to minister to congregations, 
he at once became known as one who had an 
important work laid upon him. He labored for 
some years in the South, and became rector of 
the principal church in New Orleans, where he re- 
mained till he went to Chicago. His last charge 
was St. James's Church in Chicago. It was a par- 
ish of strong and energetic men, able to appreciate 
his intellect and his character; but it had suffered 
as other interests had suffered, not many years be- 
fore, in the terrible fire that laid that city deso- 
late. The brave rector became the worthy and 



1 6 THE DIGNITY OF MAN 

beloved head of a brave band of Christian workers, 
and in due time the church more than regained 
its old prosperity. Quietly, without pretension, he 
accepted the various representative places which 
seemed to come to him by natural succession, and 
in the General Convention he became an active 
member and a forcible and respected debater, and 
accepted and performed important business duties 
with efficiency. He was offered and declined one 
of the bishoprics of his adopted State, because his 
people at that time needed him, and he w T ould not 
desert them. During the yellow-fever epidemic at 
the South in 1878 his activity in getting aid for 
the sufferers gained him the same general regard, 
without reference to race or creed, which he won 
elsewhere during all his ministry. 

In 1879 the Diocese of Michigan, at its Annual 
Convention in June, was under the necessity of 
choosing a bishop. After some failures to agree 
upon candidates presented to the laity for concur- 
rence, Dr. Harris was nominated by the clergy for 
confirmation. The convention contained the most 
able lay representation ever known in that body ; 
and yet his career had been so modest that while 
there was nothing suggested against him, there 
was very little known of him. He was chosen by 
no more than the requisite majority. But as soon 
as the news of the choice reached abroad, the tele- 



INTRO D UCTION. I 7 

graph brought in a few hours such numerous and 
convincing congratulations, that had there been 
time to consult the senders before the vote was 
taken, the lay vote would probably have been 
substantially solid in his favor. 

His consecration took place Sept. 17, 1879, 
three days after he had completed his thirty-eighth 
year. The necessity of having it at such a time 
in the week as would not interfere with the en- 
gagements of the clergy in their parishes made it 
impossible to appoint it, as would have been de- 
sirable, on his birthdav. It was also the strong 
wish of his people in Chicago to have him set 
apart to his high office in his own church; but 
there were prevailing reasons for having the con- 
secration in Michigan. It was held in St. Paul's 
Church, Detroit, the oldest in the city and State, 
which was organized in 1824, when there was no 
other Episcopal church between Lake Erie and 
the Pacific Ocean; and when Michigan Territory, 
with a white population less than that of most 
small cities, included within its jurisdiction all of 
the country in the same latitude with the Rocky 
Mountains. 

The occasion brought together an unusual num- 
ber of bishops, and personal friends of the new 
bishop from remote parts of the Union. The 

consecrating bishop was Richard Hooker Wilmer, 

2 



1 8 THE DIGNITY OF MAN 

of Alabama, — the State where he was born, — 
who had introduced him into the ministry, and 
who loved him as a son. When the great con- 
gregation saw the solemn but hearty gladness 
with which the eminent prelates welcomed their 
new associate, and when they looked on him, as 
his majestic form and noble countenance im- 
pressed every one with the conviction that he 
was an unmistakable and honest leader of men, 
they thanked God and took courage. They were 
not disappointed. 

Bishop Harris at once took measures to inform 
himself of the state of affairs in his diocese. His 
quick apprehension and systematic habits made 
that an easy task, as far as it could be performed 
without personal visitation in each parish, which 
came speedily. His first sermon was preached in 
St. Paul's Church, Detroit, at the earliest opportu- 
nity, and it gave a clear idea of his conception of a 
bishop's functions. It is the first sermon in this 
volume. As the season was advancing, and the 
Upper Peninsula was not accessible readily in 
cold weather, he made his first visitation in that 
part of the State, and impressed every one as 
favorably with his wisdom and capacity for busi- 
ness as he had with his personal merits. 

On one of these occasions, being pressed for 
time, and likely to be detained at Detour, at the 



INTRODUCTION. 1 9 

mouth of St. Mary's River, he procured an open 
Mackinaw boat manned by two lads, and crossed 
over the open water forty miles to Cheboygan, 
in weather by no means serene, and had to put 
his own hands to the oars to carry the boat to 
port. He continued to visit the parishes until 
he had seen all of them. In all cases he had 
conferences with vestries as well as ministers, and 
he stirred up the church spirit wherever he went. 
He had the valuable and somewhat rare faculty 
of remembering names and faces, and he seldom 
had any difficulty in recalling persons he had 
met, and under what circumstances he met them. 
He had thus in his mind, for ready reference, a 
sufficient knowledge of the situation and peculiari- 
ties of all the parishes. 

But, busy as he was with his diocesan affairs, 
he had already begun to look beyond them to 
their more indirect bearings. As was more fully 
exemplified in his subsequent writings and ad- 
dresses, he had an intense devotion to the civil 
institutions of the United States, and believed it a 
necessary part of his religious duty to fulfil the 
obligations of a citizen, As this view, often and 
strongly expressed, did not always commend itself 
to some scrupulous souls who do not seem to re- 
gard the precept for rendering his own to Caesar 
as one of perpetual obligation, it is worthy of a 



20 THE DIGNITY OF MAN 

moment's attention. The published course of 
" Bohlen Lectures " delivered by him some years 
later contains a series of illustrations of his gen- 
eral theory. He believed all the essential organi- 
zations of human society as no less a part of the 
Divine scheme for human civilization than the 
religious system ordained by the Ruler of the Uni- 
verse. From the family to the State, as to the 
Church, he held that society was one of the ap- 
pointed instruments for the preservation and ad- 
vancement of humanity. He believed, further, that 
the plans of the Almighty are ordered generally 
by law, rather than by special interferences, and 
that nations were usually left to form their own 
institutions, subject to the responsibility for their 
conduct, which history has so abundantly exempli- 
fied. He believed that a popular government, 
such as is provided for and regulated by American 
Constitutional principles, is the best of all forms, 
and better fitted than any other, if rightly main- 
tained and administered, to secure to each citizen 
his complete equality before the law, and his 
freedom and prosperity. And believing this, he 
was as firmly convinced that so much of church 
polity as is of human cognizance should be framed 
as closely as possible in analogy to the scheme of 
secular affairs, keeping civil and religious freedom 
in harmonious relations, and regarding both as an 



INTRO D UCTION. 2 1 

inheritance from the Lord. His intense patriot- 
ism and his pride as an American citizen were in 
his sight a plain and religious duty. Accordingly 
he desired to make prominent in his teachings not 
only the religious character of the duty to respect 
the rights of our neighbors, but to respect and 
cherish the fabric of human society as the divinely 
ordered means for protecting those rights, which 
have never been respected and cannot be protected 
without law and government. 

Convinced as he was that there could be no safe 
union of Church and State, he was convinced also 
of the necessity for placing religion prominently 
before the world as the best means of quickening 
men in the performance of all duties, and impress- 
ing them with the value and universal efficacy of 
pure motives as springs of action. And as the 
period of education is the time when character is 
formed, he was solicitous to bring such forces 
to bear upon students as would help them to 
become good citizens, by making them recognize 
duty instead of policy as the guide of their lives. 

The next day after his consecration he first 
expressed his solicitude concerning religious influ- 
ences upon the students of the Michigan Univer- 
sity. Admitting the impracticability of making 
theological teaching a part of the University 
course, it was evident that the ordinary parish 



22 THE DIGNITY OF MAN 

influences were inadequate to reach and control 
large bodies of persons, who were usually men 
grown, and masters of their own conduct, and 
many of whom had no religious ties whatever. 
He thought that Christian churches could not act 
efficiently without some place to which students 
could be attracted by legitimate attractions, and 
furnished means of companionship and quiet rec- 
reation, as well as facilities for religious cultivation 
in subjects not within the scholastic or professional 
courses. The idea was hailed with pleasure by the 
University teachers and the people of Ann Arbor, 
as well as of other parts of the State, who began 
to look to him as the one capable of putting into 
shape a purpose that in its crude form was so full 
of promise. He had said to persons who were 
the strongest supporters of the University, what 
at first seemed paradoxical, — that he was more 
deeply concerned in its welfare than they were. 
Its truth was recognized when he pointed out that 
a bishop is bound to his diocese for life, while 
other men can at all times change their residence 
and go where they please. The history of the 
development of this idea would form a long but 
instructive chapter by itself. He revolved it con- 
tinually. Scheme after scheme was urged upon 
him, and to some of them he was inclined strongly, 
until convinced they w r ould not do. He became 



INTRO D I 'C TIOX. 2 3 

satisfied, some time before his plan finally became 
determined, that while any scheme adopted should 
be under his supervision, and kept in harmonious 
relations with the church which had called him to 
its service, its advantages should be open to all 
students, of whatever creed, who desired to profit 
by its facilities. During the latter days, when it 
was gradually acquiring symmetry, he was ap- 
proached by several theological students of other 
denominations, who urged him earnestly to bring 
his work into operation. The patient waiting and 
reflection of several years at last brought him to 
a satisfactory conclusion. Without going into full 
details, it may be said that it includes a spacious 
building furnished with lecture and reading rooms, 
library, parlors, and rooms for physical exercises, 
under charge of a guild, made up chiefly of stu- 
dents and professors electing their own agencies, 
and left with a very large discretion in manage- 
ment, subject to the approval of the bishop. They 
were authorized to conduct general literary exer- 
cises, and procure ordinary lecturers, with the same 
approval. To provide the specially religious fea- 
tures of the plan, three or more annual courses 
of lectures were contemplated, each course to be 
reasonably endowed, and conducted by lecturers 
appointed by the bishop. These lectures are all 
designed to deal with those subjects especially 



24 THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 

which bear on the relations of religion with society 
and education; and these courses are open to all 
who choose to attend them. Single lectures are 
also contemplated, by persons appointed by the 
bishop, on similar topics. The Baldwin Lecture- 
ship has been fully endowed, and two courses de- 
livered under it have already been published. 
Progress has been made with the others, and the 
experience thus far has been satisfactory, and is 
believed to have solved one of the most important 
problems of education. The Hobart Guild Hall 
is a successful venture. 

This has been referred to at some length, be- 
cause it is the only instance in which the pur- 
poses and ideas of Bishop Harris, beyond his 
official work, have been materialized and made 
operative under his own care. 

His first official efforts were made to extend 
the preaching of the gospel. In this work his 
energy and good judgment were both so ap- 
parent, that the contributions for Diocesan Mis- 
sions were increased rapidly, and to an unhoped- 
for extent, and the increase has been progressive. 
Mission work has been enlarged and systematized, 
and many promising fields have been opened. 
Not very long after this impulse was received, 
one of those devastating fires occurred in the 
eastern part of the State which have become so 



IN TROD UCTION. 2 5 

dreaded in the timber districts, and a large sec- 
tion was laid waste, with complete destruction 
of farms and buildings, and some loss of life. 
Bishop Harris organized an active corps of as- 
sistants, and collected and distributed large con- 
tributions among the sufferers. Beyond this he 
obtained means for building comfortable places 
for worship, which became mission centres. His 
character and ways had acquired such admira- 
tion and confidence, that an attempt made to 
enable the parishes to gain enlarged power to 
contribute to missions, by relieving them from 
supporting the Episcopate, led to the collection 
in cash means, within a few weeks, of an addi- 
tion to the Episcopal Fund of $50,000, all of 
which was due to faith in the bishop. Several 
thousand dollars of this came from personal ad- 
miration of his nobility and beauty of character, 
outside of church membership or attachment. 

The story of his episcopate within his diocese 
becomes one of those fortunate narratives which 
have little to tell beyond steadily increasing 
peace and prosperity. The people are said to 
be happy who have no history; but that con- 
dition is only reached by the heroic and constant 
sacrifices of those who give themselves and their 
lives to secure its preservation. When any jar 



26 THE DIGNITY OF MAN 

comes, it is found that the smooth motion was 
the result of great forces kept working under or- 
derly restraint. The greatest peace is the work 
of the greatest energy and wisdom. 

A bishop who achieves this, and only this, is 
justly reckoned as a faithful and wise steward, 
and his name is held in honor. Bishop Harris 
did all for his diocese that wisdom could sug- 
gest and fidelity and zeal accomplish. He never 
neglected his home duties for other occupations. 
The prosperity of the churches was foremost and 
continually in his mind and heart. He carried 
his heavy official burden cheerfully, and answered 
all calls promptly. His clergy leaned on him for 
advice and comfort as children on a loving father. 
When he visited their parishes, his coming was 
looked for and welcomed by old and young of 
every station, for the gentle courtesy and loving 
frankness of his personal recognition. He never 
chilled any one, however unimportant, by con- 
descension or formal urbanity. As a high-bred 
Christian gentleman, and a true American, he re- 
spected the dignity of our common manhood. 

But he had clear ideas of a field of duty which 
was not theological in the ordinary sense of that 
word, although it took in his sight the form of 
Christian obligation. Regarding, as has been al- 
ready hinted, the Church and all its instrumen- 



IN TROD UCTION*. 2 7 

talities as placed here in activity, not only for 
God's glory but for the highest benefit of the 
human race, and especially of that part of it 
where his own lot was cast, he naturally kept 
before him the end as well as the means. He 
could not do this without seeing that other in- 
struments and methods than those of the church 
were doing much, and might do more, to ad- 
vance the prosperity and further the highest in- 
terests of his fellows and their organizations. His 
quick sympathies and tenderness led him first of 
all to lament the variances which defeat so much 
good, and the cruelties which crush out so much 
courage and ruin so many hopes. And he found 
in our schemes of education much lamentable 
disregard of the more exalting functions, and 
much fragmentary teaching, that lacked organic 
union with the vital forces of truth and wisdom. 
With no sanguine notions of wonders that he 
might accomplish, and no assumption that he 
had a special mission, he seized the frequent 
opportunities offered him of making public ad- 
dresses before public audiences, at college com- 
mencements, congresses and conventions, and 
other gatherings where sound words are not ir- 
relevant, and advocated the things he believed 
in with such force and eloquence that his words 
were not wasted. He delivered on one occasion 



28 THE DIGNITY OF MAX. 

at least, in the Michigan University, the annual 
Commencement Day Address, which has there 
superseded ail the former ceremonies, and is in- 
tended to be a worthy ending to the scholar's 
course of training. His love for young men, and 
his enthusiasm for all that exalts and embellishes 
scholarship, and lifts it to the highest plane of 
dignity and usefulness, aroused him to exert all 
his powers to make his contribution worthy. His 
bright and piercing eyes, his sweet and powerful 
voice, his commanding stature and elegant grace 
of posture and gesture, and the kindly expression 
that made his handsome face radiant, charmed 
his entire audience, and they became responsive 
to him as a musical instrument to its master. 
His occasional visits and deliverances to students 
are among their best traditions. He presided at 
the Church Congress held in Detroit a few years 
ago, and not only made an opening address, 
which was not surpassed if it was equalled by 
any of the papers or speeches presented by the 
distinguished men who took part in the Congress, 
but attracted still more admiration by his course 
as a presiding officer. With firmness that al- 
lowed no dispute, and courtesy that made the 
discipline pleasant, he gave each topic its proper 
place and each speaker his allotted time, and no 
more, so that the programme was filled precisely 



INTR OD UC TION. 2 9 

as intended, and what is sometimes a rather cha- 
otic assemblage was made a model of order. 

While no one appreciated better the impor- 
tance of the duties to which he had sacrificed 
his worldly prospects, and he had decided con- 
victions that his religious associations were most 
accordant with primitive Christian polity, he felt 
a warm regard for, and was in hearty sympathy 
with, the sincere devotion of Christian ministers 
of other denominations in their religious labors. 
They were in his sight brethren serving the same 
Master, and doing his work. He gave, and they 
desired, no renunciation of convictions; but while 
their public services were distinct, they took sweet 
counsel together, and he was to many of them a 
father as well as a brother. They hastened to 
join in the honors rendered to his memory, and 
in pulpit and press, as in private conversation, 
they lamented for him as a great captain of the 
Lord's host, and a holy and humble man of God. 
One of the most powerful addresses he ever made 
was at the meeting of the Evangelical Alliance in 
Washington, not very long ago, which attracted 
attention everywhere, and has been referred to 
by the press since his death as placing him at 
the very front as a great orator and a great and 
large-minded man. 

But his heart was especially interested in the 



30 THE DIGNITY OF MAN 

vital social problems which are exercising most 
thinking persons, and the solution of which is one 
of the pressing needs of our time. He held none 
of those Utopian ideas which look to the destruc- 
tion of private interests and possessions, and he 
did not imagine that society would be set at rest 
by any levelling of fortunes at the expense of 
diligence and industry. He did believe that hu- 
man society is largely at fault for the oppression 
that is done under the sun, and the power for 
mischief that is possible under laws and usages 
which facilitate irresistible combinations of men 
or of money to paralyze opposition. For this 
he set forth no panacea. He was too conscien- 
tious to champion any plan until it satisfied his 
sober judgment, after long study and reflection. 
But it was one of his cherished desires to make 
this his principal subject of consideration in the 
future, and in patience and perseverance to devise 
or aid others in devising means to diminish the 
evil and cultivate harmony. But of one thing he 
persuaded himself, and it is the theme of many 
utterances, — that the peace and good-will which 
were sung by the angels at the Nativity were the 
only absolute remedy. When times are out of 
joint, tempers become unreasonable; but every 
one knows that poverty is not half so bitter as 
lack of sympathy, and that there is no greater 



INTROD UCTION. 3 I 

cruelty than wounding self-respect. This was the 
meaning of his uniform assertion of equality in 
rights under Divine and human law, which renders 
all honest work respectable, and denies the right 
of any one who buys another's service to assert 
that manhood is to be thrown into the bargain. 

As Bishop Harris never used the pulpit for 
any purpose beyond that of preaching the gospel, 
there were many phases of life and action on 
which he could only address the public through 
the press or by secular addresses. He had not 
been long in his diocese before his genius and 
eloquence made him desired as a public speaker 
in various parts of the United States. While he 
never left home unless he could do so without 
prejudice to his home duties, his systematic order 
gave him many such opportunities, and he be- 
came popular and influential as an orator and 
moral teacher. Audiences loved to listen to him, 
and went home delighted as well as edified. 

He gave some lectures in the New York Theo- 
logical Seminary, in the special course at Kenyon 
College, at Philadelphia under the Bohlen endow- 
ment, and at several conventions of scholars and 
persons interested in reform and philanthropic 
work. Many of these were published in a fugitive 
form. The only book he ever published was the 
" Bohlen Lectures." These are a connected series, 



32 THE DIGNITY OF MAN 

chiefly devoted to exemplifying the co-ordinate 
functions of religious and social order. They are 
thoughtful and suggestive, and full of practical 
wisdom. Their conciseness and logical arrange- 
ment render them attractive reading to intelligent 
and scholarly readers. It may be that dilution 
and expansion would have made them easier of 
digestion by some classes of readers; but their 
compact force and completeness indicate a mas- 
ter's work. 

Bishop Harris generally spoke without refer- 
ring to his notes. He committed so readily that 
he could always reproduce in speaking precisely 
what he had written. But he was an easy off- 
hand speaker, and his speeches were as polished 
and complete in the one case as in the other. He 
had, however, such a conscientious desire to say 
nothing unguardedly, that it has been found, by 
reference to his papers, that on all occasions, so- 
cial as well as public, he was in the habit of think- 
ing out and writing down, when time permitted, 
what would be an appropriate utterance. It is 
not likely that when he rose to his feet he always 
or generally repeated what he had written with 
verbal fidelity. There are frequently occasions 
where a speaker who is preceded by others would 
find himself covering the same ground if he ad- 
hered to his previously written manuscript. No 



INTRO D UCTION. 3 3 

one ever knew him to fall into that difficulty. It 
is more likely that he wrote to fill his mind with 
the subject rather than the words. His manu- 
scripts are generally if not always in his own 
handwriting. He w r as not inclined to use an 
amanuensis, but wrote very rapidly, and his pen 
moved with the thoughts. 

When he had his mind intent on any subject 
upon which he wished to write, he not only studied 
and compared what he could find in books and 
other receptacles, but he loved to converse on it, 
and exchange views with others, whom he usually 
taught much more than they taught him, but who 
could often from their own experience or obser- 
vation correct or confirm his impressions, or bring 
new light upon the matter. 

But he did not seek his friends chiefly to sharpen 
his intellect or inform his mind. His nature was 
eminently social, and there were few more pleas- 
ant experiences than to meet him in his hours of 
rest and relaxation and listen to his genial talk, 
and exchange those conversational thoughts and 
pleasantries that have their practical side in cheer- 
ful refreshment, which is the wise man's medicine. 
Although he had not much leisure for pursuits 
which did not have some bearing on his life work, 
he had nevertheless a broad comprehension of 
what would aid it. There are many weapons in 



34 THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 

the scholar's armory, and many exercises which 
strengthen his faculties. He liked, when he could, 
to go back to the wisdom of the ancients, knowing 
that modern thoughts have sometimes been dam- 
aged in the borrowing. Plato was his chief favor- 
ite in ancient literature, and there was at least one 
side of his mind which would have made him con- 
genial to the old philosopher. He had also paid 
much attention to the theories and discussions 
on ethnology and language; but while his mind 
was receptive, he did not surrender his judgment 
unconditionally. 

While it is evident, from his various writings, and 
his private conversations, that he had his thoughts 
fixed intently in one direction, yet the subject was 
so many sided, and the scheme so large, that he 
never became a man of one idea, or a harper on 
one string. The harmonies of the universe are all 
in unison, but no mind is large enough to include 
all of them. 

Soon after the bishop came to Michigan, an es- 
timable lady of St. Paul's Church secured a lot on 
the island of Mackinac as a gift from Mr. Gurdon 
Hubbard of Chicago, conditioned on its improve- 
ment. She procured sufficient means to build a 
neat cottage and furnish it appropriately for sum- 
mer use. The bishop and his family made it their 
summer refuge, where he found leisure for such 



INTR OD UCTION. 3 5 

work as he cared to do and needed quiet for doing, 
but where he spent much time in open-air enjoy- 
ments, and in social intercourse with congenial 
friends and neighbors. The house was far enough 
away from the summer bustle of the village and 
the crowd of the hotels to have all the merits 
of seclusion, while within a short distance was a 
colony of agreeable families to whom the cottage 
in the wood was as attractive as a field of clover 
to the bees. 

This is an imperfect sketch of the way in which 
Bishop Harris's life and work were made manifest. 
His plan was one which counted all interests as 
subject to one family under the Divine scheme, 
however separately grouped or subdivided. And 
while in so short a life as his this could only be 
partly outlined, yet the adherence to this principle 
as the cardinal rule of harmonizing God's plans 
was itself a proof of the greatness of mind and 
character that made him a characteristic product 
and leading spirit of our time. 

Yet, after all, true greatness is not in what is 
written or what is done, so much as in the man 
himself. The men who stand forth before others 
in the long procession of history have left very 
little of their works that we can look at and appre- 
ciate. But we know them, nevertheless, as heroes 



36 THE DIGNITY OF MAN 

and benefactors, and we know that their goodly 
presence and the sound of their voice inspired 
love and confidence. When a truly great man 
appears, his greatness needs no expounding, and 
virtue emanates from his presence. 

Bishop Harris, with all his intellectual power, 
his imposing appearance, his simple and moving 
eloquence, his executive ability, and the other 
qualities so often dwelt upon, may not in any one 
or all of these things have been beyond other men 
who never stood pre-eminent. And it is as diffi- 
cult to analyze the more subtle elements which 
gave his personality its power and charm, as to 
apply scientific tests to the beauty of flowers or 
the glory of sunset. The finer qualities which 
excite love and trust as well as reverence and ad- 
miration elude description. In saying they exist, 
all is said that can be. But with this difficulty it 
would do the bishop's memory great injustice if 
some of these manifestations were not pointed out. 

His patience and gentleness were not the result 
of indolent good-nature. Any one who knew him 
well discovered that the real secret of his uni- 
form calmness was the absolute self-control which 
makes him that ruleth his spirit greater than he 
that taketh a city. His feelings were deep and 
tender, and had never lost their bloom. He was 
naturally and always sensitive. His observation 



INTR OB UC TION, 3 7 

was quick and his reading of character instinctive. 
His mind was not only logical, but very acute and 
discriminating, and he had a taste for metaphysi- 
cal pursuits which, if he had been a secluded stu- 
dent and not a man of action, would probably 
have led him as safely as any solitary mind can 
go safely, yet with many perils, through all the 
labyrinths and mazes which find no end. But this 
capacity of fine discrimination, kept corrected by 
the test of daily experience of life and its facts, 
was of value to him, and enabled him to detect 
sophistry, and look at all the sides of each plan 
or question which he had to consider. His great 
love of intellectual diversions was one of the things 
in which self-denial was hardest and self-control 
most bracing. He had also not only a keen en- 
joyment of humor, but a love of poetry and of 
the finer products of literature which are so at- 
tractive to men of delicate sensibility. It may 
readily be imagined that he would have enjoyed 
shaping his own fancies in musical verse or as mu- 
sical prose, which his fine ear would have guarded 
from discords, and his faultless taste would have 
made charming. If he indulged in such delights, 
he never made it known even to his friends. His 
style was chastened, in his sermons and essays, 
where he might have embellished it if he had 
chosen ; and his memory was so full of accurately 



38 THE DIGNITY OF MAN 

remembered gems of verse, that it is remarkable 
he did not glide off unconsciously into quotations 
or flights of fancy. He did indeed, but very sel- 
dom, adopt some poetical expression of an idea 
that would have lost force by other treatment, as 
he did in one instance incorporate into a sermon 
the beautiful reference in Wordsworth to the soul's 
premonitions of immortality. Some other equally 
happy uses of poetical extracts make us wish that 
his leisure and his sense of duty might have al- 
lowed him more indulgence. In his multiplied 
capacities he had the elements of a poet, which 
he discarded, and of an essayist, which he dis- 
played to advantage in many ways, but never 
allowed to do holiday work. This man of refine- 
ment and elegant taste and culture, frank as a boy 
and magnanimous in thought and action, when 
thrown among the varied realities of life, where he 
was liable at all times to have his tastes and 
sensibilities and temper tried severely, acquired 
such admirable control of himself that his temper 
seemed never to be ruffled ; he never indulged in 
sarcasm or even mild satire, and accepted cheer- 
fully all the privations of comfort and elegance 
which came to him. 

The office of a faithful bishop has its rewards, 
but it has also its great and small martyrdoms. 
He is condemned to a great deal of that worst 



INTRODUCTION. 39 

kind of solitude, where absence of congenial 
spirits is aggravated by the importunity of vexa- 
tious ones. In a large diocese, the number of 
clergy and laymen who visit him, not on errands 
of social enjoyment, but to lay their burdens on 
him, as well as perhaps in some cases to add 
some weight to his own, is very considerable. 
Pious men of all kinds represent, very much as 
others do, many phases of human nature. Grace 
and fundamental goodness do not entirely oblit- 
erate the old Adam. A narrow mind sees nothing 
but folly in the broad wisdom of a great one. 
An obstinate disposition perseveres in stolid op- 
position, with small regard to reason. A vulpine 
nature, however sanctified, never moves in straight 
lines; bluntness may become insufferable impu- 
dence. Weak men shuffle off their own respon- 
sibilities on his broader shoulders, and then waste 
his time with getting up a pretence of activity. 

A bishop may be made of stern enough material 
to bring them all to their bearings, and deal with 
them sharply and in plain language, and exhibit 
them to themselves as they appear to him. The 
world w r ould not much blame him for doing so ; 
but it would bring sullenness and vindictiveness 
or heartbreak. Bishop Harris received all men 
patiently and kindly, and, as far as human nature 
would respond to him, affectionately. If he could 



40 THE DIGNITY OF MAN 

not satisfy the unreasonable, or acquiesce in what 
was wrong, he sent no one away wounded or 
humiliated. And if some self-tormenting, over- 
scrupulous person came to him morbidly invit- 
ing penance and discipline, he encouraged him 
to more manly and wholesome ways, and sent 
him out rejoicing into the sunshine. The house- 
hold is happy where the father's face is cheering 
and comforting. 

A life so devoted and beneficent is not always 
a joyful one. But Bishop Harris was not only 
cheerful and contented, but happy. He had one 
great privation in the difficulty of always finding 
congenial associates to discuss face to face the 
subjects which interested him. But such enjoy- 
ment was not by any means so rare as to be 
notable. He frequented, when he had leisure, a 
club of intellectual men, who discussed all manner 
of subjects freely and unceremoniously, and if they 
did not help him in dealing with his special topics, 
they sharpened his faculties, and gave him recre- 
ation as well as profit. And it has happened to 
him, as often happens to bright men of his kind, 
that persons of entirely different genius and tem- 
perament became attached to him, and admired 
him almost passionately. 

To those whom he honored with his friendship 
and attachment he was a charming companion, 



IN TROD UCTION. 4 r 

full of brightness and animation, and confiding, 
tender, and sympathizing. He had a healthy 
taste for innocent enjoyments, and when he was 
worn down by confinement and worry, it de- 
lighted him to accompany a brother of the angle 
to the secluded waters of some solitary inlet on 
Lake Superior, or launch out from the coast, 
where his skill or good fortune generally gained 
him the larger share of the prey. He had a love 
of Nature in all its manifestations, and was a close 
observer of animals and plants; and animals loved 
him. One of the pleasures he had planned for 
himself, after he should return from his last jour- 
ney, was a study of the ornithology of Michigan, 
with which he was anxious to become familiar. 

His home-life, which was beautiful, will not be 
dwelt on here. 

But some one who believes that a biographer 
should be inflexible as Rhadamanthus may ask, 
Was this man perfect ? Good reader, this is not 
a biography, but the poor attempt of a friend 
who loved him to depict a part of his merits. 
In this forum there is no need of a Devil's Advo- 
cate to invent objections to canonization. What 
defects he had were not such as a friend need 
search out; and his enemies, if he had any, did 
not venture to trumpet them. 

The fact that he grew greater and wiser con- 



42 THE DIGNITY OF MAN 

tinually, showed that he had once been behind 
his later growth. Happy is the man who, when 
he progresses, goes upward and not downward. 
He was pure, brave, tender, honest, faithful. He 
loved God and loved men. The faults or defects 
of such a character need not exercise the charity 
of any one. 

In June last he went with his daughter and 
some friends to attend the Convention of Bishops 
of the British and American and Colonial Epis- 
copal Churches, and to spend some time in trav- 
elling through Great Britain and the Continent, 
meaning subsequently to go to Greece, Egypt, 
and Palestine. He had become very much wearied 
by his labors at home before he went, and he de- 
voted himself in England to the business of the 
Conference, and was obliged to undergo many of 
the more trying social ordeals, and gained no rest. 
On the 15th of July, while preaching in Winches- 
ter one of the sermons in this volume, he had 
a slight attack of vertigo, which for a moment 
disturbed him, but did not prevent him from 
completing his discourse. But within a day or 
two he began to grow weaker, and showed some 
signs of a lesion of the brain, and grew gradually 
more feeble, until at last he became unconscious, 
and on August 21, at sunset, he died. His funeral 



INTRODUCTION. 43 

was celebrated solemnly in Westminster Abbey, 
and his memory was publicly and sincerely hon- 
ored by Englishmen of mark and by his own 
countrymen. A sad company came with his 
mortal part across the Atlantic, and after a ser- 
vice in Grace Church, New York, his body was 
brought to Detroit, and his funeral rites were 
celebrated in St. Paul's Church. The streets 
were filled with mourning thousands who could 
not find room in the building, but remained in 
perfect order and quiet outside. His coffin rested 
on the spot where nearly nine years before he 
stood up and recited the vows which pledged 
him to the work of the Episcopate. He was laid 
in Woodmere, beside the grave of his little son, 
who had gone before, and welcomed him to 
Paradise. 

James V. Campbell. 



BY THE RT. REV. HENRY C. POTTER, LL.D. 



SERMON 



MEMORIAL OF THE RT. REV. SAMUEL S. HARRIS, 
D.D., LL.D., PREACHED BY THE BISHOP OF 
NEW YORK, AT THE DIOCESAN MEMORIAL 
SERVICE HELD IN ST. JOHN'S CHURCH, DE- 
TROIT, THURSDAY, NOV. 22, 1888. 

And there was not among the children of Israel a goodlier per- 
son than he : from his shoulders and upward he was higher than 
any of the people. — 1 Samuel ix. 2. 

' I ^HIS occasion is not biographical nor eulo- 



gistic, but memorial. Suffer me to em- 
phasize the distinction, for it implicitly defines 
my task. 

I should be glad if an extensive review of the 
life of our friend might hereafter be made, for 
it would be a work of enduring value; but this 
is not the place for it. As little is it the place 
for mere panegyric or eulogium. If the purpose 
of this holy house did not prohibit these, there 
is another restriction from which I should be un- 
able to shake myself free. I am to speak this 
evening of one whom I greatly loved and deeply 
venerated, and I cannot forget that from the lan- 




48 THE DIGNITY OF MAX. 

guage of mere eulogy he would have recoiled 
with instinctive and resolute disapproval. 

But he would hardly chide me, I venture to 
believe, if he knew that, in obedience to the voice 
of his stricken diocese, I had come here to-night 
to tell you what I remember of him, — to recall 
how in him, as I profoundly believe, the grace of 
God wrought with singular power and efficacy, 
and how in his natural characteristics, enriched 
and ennobled by the indwelling power of the Holy 
Ghost, there shone forth a Christian manhood at 
once strong and wise, and so worthy of our grate- 
ful imitation. 

It is not, on the whole, an evil generation in 
which you and I are living ; but there are, never- 
theless, tremendous forces of evil which are at 
work in it. They threaten, some of us think, as 
never before, much that is sacred and venera- 
ble. They deny, with increasing frequency and 
audacity, the presence in the world of the super- 
natural. The}* deny the being of God and the 
operations of his Spirit. They disown his Word 
written and his Kingdom mystical, and for all these 
they demand, with more and more strenuous 
insistance, the evidence. 

Well, we have come here to-night, men and 
brethren, to furnish the doubters of fundamental 
verities with that which, of all other kinds of evi- 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS. 49 

dence in such a question, is at once the most sub- 
stantial and the most intelligible. We offer them 
the life and work of one who dwelt here among 
you, who went in and out among these homes and 
shops and offices, whom you knew, not merely in 
official ministrations but in the most intimate per- 
sonal contacts (for of almost all men whom I 
have ever known he was the most approachable 
and accessible), and we ask you to explain such 
a man and such a life upon any other theory than 
its being consciously lived under a Divine inspi- 
ration and unreservedly consecrated to a Divine 
service. This thought will dominate my task this 
evening, and at once define and limit the words 
which I shall say to you. Forgive me if in any 
wise they shall seem to take on a tone of remi- 
niscence too personal and individual. Others will 
bear, as others have borne, their testimony to this 
noble life. I can do little more than tell what I 
know from personal intercourse, irregular, alas ! 
and often for long periods intermitted. 

I first came to know Bishop Harris when, in 
the year 1880, he entered the House of Bishops 
for the first time, and took his seat as a mem- 
ber of that body. He had been consecrated on 
the 17th of September in the preceding year 
(1879), and the General Convention of our Church, 

which sat in 1880 in the city of New York, was 

4 



50 ■ THE DIGNITY OF MAN 

the first occasion of his meeting his brethren in 
the Episcopate. He became a member of the 
House of Bishops about the same time that the 
late Bishop of Western Texas (Dr. Elliott), and 
the present Bishops of Kentucky (Dr. Dudley), 
West Virginia (Dr. Peterkin), and Louisiana (Dr. 
Galleher) were chosen and consecrated ; and 
when, as Secretary of the House of Bishops, I 
designated the seats of the prelates, who as Jun- 
ior Bishops were placed adjacent to one another, 
I said, in playful allusion to the fact that each 
one of them had during our late Civil War been 
an officer in the Confederate service, " Gentle- 
men, I am afraid I shall have to nail up the 
United States flag on this part of the house," I 
remember, as though it were but yesterday, the 
kindly smile that broke over the face of the 
Bishop of Michigan, — a smile that not only 
showed to me that my friendly pleasantry had 
not been misinterpreted, but as it were opened 
a hitherto closed shutter in a house flooded in- 
wardly with light and warmth. From that mo- 
ment, I think, we understood each other, as it has 
ever since seemed to me, intimately; and the 
bond of brotherly regard and mutual confidence 
which then sprang into being grew and strength- 
ened, until now, blessed be God ! it reaches within 
the veil. 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS. 5 I 

What a rich and gracious life it was which 
then disclosed itself! Samuel Smith Harris was, 
indeed, a Southerner in all that is best and most 
affluent in the name, and in nothing was this 
more singularly evident than in his early develop- 
ment and maturity. He was the son of an Ala- 
bama planter, Buckner Harris, Esq., of Autauga 
County, and his school-days began at the age of 
four years. One who was his teacher then 1 has 
communicated since his death to one of his chil- 
dren her recollection of those days; and these 
reminiscences are so simply and touchingly told 
that I cannot refrain from rehearsing them here. 
Says the writer : — 

" Incidents do not make the chief impression upon my 
mind and heart, but rather the brilliant intellect which 
drew hard upon my own superior years and acquirements, 
the harmony and beauty of his character, and the royal 
graces of soul which magnetized admiration into love 
and loyalty. Among varied recollections clustering about 
a happy experience as teacher at the South, none have 
been more cherished by me than the associations with the 
school at Bushy Knob, Autauga County, Ala. 

" Its situation was unique, placed, as the old school- 
house was, amid luxuriant vegetation, quite near the 
fordable and peaceful little stream, which on occasion 
became a rushing flood. Teacher and pupils were the 
only frequenters of this isolated spot, except on Sundays. 

1 Miss H. M. Perry. 



52 THE DIGNITY OF MAX. 

when the adjacent church was transformed from its ordi- 
nary barn-like appearance into a sanctuary filled with 
devoutly earnest worshippers after the Hard-Shell Bap- 
tist pattern. You may have heard your dear father speak 
of the quiet retirement of this place. It was a retreat 
favorable to intimate intercourse between instructors and 
pupils, since even the long noon recess gave too brief 
time to take dinner at the widely scattered houses ; but 
dinner-baskets furnished an abundant luncheon, brought 
sometimes by their own hands, sometimes sent by the 
hands of some not immortal Topsy. It was in these 
noonings that I especially learned to admire and love the 
character of t little Sam Harris.' Why he was called 
' little ' by his fellow-students was an unsolved problem, 
since he was tall for a boy between the years of ten and 
eleven, though quite slight in figure and of delicate ap- 
pearance. He was a remarkably handsome boy to look 
upon, and of such attractive manners as to create the wish 
that he were more diminutive and were possessed of less 
dignity, so that one might indulge in the caressing de- 
monstrations which sometimes fall to the lot of small boys 
of the same age ; but we each took our luncheon into 
different corners of the room, and settling ourselves on 
the hard wooden benches, entered upon the intellectual 
intercourse afforded us during the delightful hour of lei- 
sure. It was not books that occupied us then, but talk. 
My enthusiasm for imparting knowledge was still in its 
youthful freshness, and he was an ardent, inquiring learn- 
er ; and although it would be superfluous to recall the 
topics which supplied matter on these occasions, yet 
memory vividly presents to me the fact that I enjoyed 
intensely those days of which he writes to me in a letter 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS. 53 

in May, 1885, just after his return from a visit to the 
scenes of his boyhood : 6 All the old days passed be- 
fore me in a clear-drawn solemn vision, and none were 
more vivid or more joyous in memory than those which 
I passed under your kind and inspiring tuition. Indeed, I 
have never forgotten you, and have always thought of you 
with gratitude and affection.' 

"It may be permitted to me to say just here that I 
aspire to no loftier praise, and crave no sweeter message 
of regard and remembrance, than is conveyed in these 
words. 

" I think he pursued his studies not so much from 
ambitious desires as from strong love of knowledge, 
though ambition, too, was undoubtedly excited by fric- 
tion with more mature minds. Though surpassing his 
companions in every study, he aroused no jealousy in 
them. He seemed to be made on a different plan and 
after a different pattern from themselves, and that ap- 
parently increased the warmth of their regard, and caused 
them to become gentle under the influence of his gra- 
ciousness. I recall one particular time when one of the 
boys, called 6 long Tom Smith/ rallied him on staying in- 
doors, and a little scuffle ensued in trying to force him 
out. Sam came off victor, although his antagonist was 
large and strong enough to carry him out bodily. How- 
ever, he was not generally averse to sports, but was an 
active, joyous, merry-hearted boy, whose companionship 
was desired and sought by the whole school, only at these 
noonings he indulged his preference for the society of his 
instructors. Those of his fellow-students at that time who 
may be living near the old haunts will, I am certain, 
heartily concur with me in rendering even more enthu- 



54 THE DIGNITY OF MAN 

siastic praise than I have ventured to indulge in. I 
shrink from expressing all the praise which affection sug- 
gests, lest a wound be given to the humility which 
prompted him to write, ' I do most sincerely trust that we 
may meet again in this world; but if that happiness 
should be denied me here, I do not doubt, if I shall be 
faithful, that we shall meet in the land of the living.' He 
was faithful to the end. It remains for me to follow his 
example." 

From school Samuel Harris passed, at the age 
of fifteen, to the University of Alabama, which he 
entered in the year 1856. This was an early 
matriculation, but it would have occurred two 
years earlier still, had it not been for his extreme 
youth, on account of which he was refused admis- 
sion. As it was, he entered sophomore, and was 
graduated three years later. His college life, a 
friend writes, was a very happy one, and he spent 
a large part of it in the exceptionally fine college 
library, which was aftenvard destroyed by fire. It 
was during his undergraduate life that he rendered 
to a friend whom he saved from drowning, and the 
scar of whose death-grip he bore upon his shoul- 
ders for years afterward, a service w r hich became 
prophetic of his latest and highest calling. 

From college, in the year 1859, he passed at 
once to the study of the law under Chancellor 
Keys, and was admitted to the bar in i860, at 
the age of nineteen, a special act of the legis- 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS. 55 

lature authorizing his admission at that age. In 
the following year he married, and before the 
year had ended he was confronted with the prob- 
lem of the Civil War, and entered the Confederate 
service. 

It was said of Frederick W. Robertson, that if 
he had not been a clergyman he would have been 
a soldier; and he more than once implied him- 
self that some of his strongest sympathies and 
enthusiasms were with that service. It was not 
so with the young lawyer from Autauga County. 
The life of the camp was not congenial to him, 
and with his refined instincts and sensitive na- 
ture we can well understand it. But he had a 
keen sense of honor and of duty, and these held 
him to his tasks, principally those of a staff offi- 
cer, until the end. When that had come, he re- 
moved to New York and resumed the practice of 
the law, which he continued until the year 1868. 
This page of his life is interesting and charac- 
teristic. His practice, from choice, was mainly in 
the Supreme Court. He disliked and disdained 
the arts by which juries are too often influenced, 
and still more the sharp practice by which Jus- 
tice is too often wounded in the house of her 
friends. But his pursuit of his profession was 
eminently successful, and he never lost a cause. 
Meanwhile, his love of letters continued to re- 



5 6 THE DIGNITY OF MAN 

assert itself. He wrote a novel, which was pub- 
lished in 1868, called " Sheltern," of which a 
discriminating friend says that, while open to criti- 
cism " as to style and technique, the plot is good, 
and shows quite decided powers of imagination. 
But," the same friend adds, "the chief fault of the 
book [of course he is speaking of it as a work 
of fiction] is that from end to end the writer 
moralizes like a born Scotchman. In fact, if I 
did not know who the writer was, I should have 
said that he was a preacher, or ought to become 
one." 

Already, in other words, the spell of his great 
vocation was upon him. And so it is not sur- 
prising to find the venerable bishop, Dr. Richard 
H. Wilmer, of Alabama, whose place in this com- 
memorative service I am unworthily filling, and 
whose absence from this pulpit you cannot regret 
as much as I do, writing of this period in the his- 
tory of Bishop Harris in these words : — 

" There are many old citizens of Autauga County, 
Ala., who dwell fondly upon the early days of Bishop 
Harris, and love to speak of that refinement and courtesy 
of manner which characterized him through life. The 
writer of these lines will speak of what he personally 
knows. 

" I find upon my Episcopal Records the confirmation 
of Samuel S. Harris at St. John's, Montgomery, Jan. 17, 
1866. At that time I had no personal acquaintance with 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS. 57 

him, and did not again meet him until some time in the 
autumn of 1867. I often recall the interesting circum- 
stances connected with that meeting. I had been that 
day pondering the question, — when does not a bishop 
ponder it ? — ' Where shall we find the right men to fill 
up the ranks of the ministry ?' 

" Riding out home in a street-car, my attention was 
drawn to a stranger seated in the car. So much was I 
impressed by his singularly refined and intelligent coun- 
tenance, that I said to an acquaintance, ' That is the sort 
of man I am looking for.' 'Who is he?' said my friend. 
4 1 do not know,' I replied; 'but there is something in 
that man.' His whole presence attracted me, and I in- 
dulged in speculation as to his future life, longing to put 
my hands upon him for the service of the King. 

" The car at last reached my gate, and I got out. The 
stranger followed me, and immediately said, 'This is 
Bishop Wilmer, is it not ? ' I assented, and then he 
said, ' I am Harris, — Samuel Harris. I am come, 
Bishop, to offer myself to you for the ministry, if you 
will have me. I have been practising law in Xew York, 
but I feel called to another vocation, and I have my 
letter of transfer from the Bishop of Xew York (Horatio 
Potter), and wish to enter the ministry in my native 
State.' 

" It may be imagined how we spent that night, and 
with what feelings of gratitude to God I marked out his 
studies and licensed him to act as lay-reader in St. John's, 
Montgomery, that church being then without pastoral 
care. The good people of St. John's will long remember 
his sojourn among them. When he was ordained deacon, 
shortly after, there was a general desire on the part of the 



58 THE DIGNITY OF MAN 

congregation to elect him to the vacant rectorship ; but 
I resisted it for the reason that I was unwilling to have 
him dwarfed by an amount of labor too great almost for 
one of maturer years and fuller preparation. 

" February 10, 1869, I ordained him deacon in St. 
John's, Montgomery. He was presented for ordination 
by the Rev. J. F. Smith, a dear friend of his and of his 
father's house. 

" June 30, 1869, I ordained him priest in the same 
church where he had received confirmation and deacon's 
orders. 

" At that time he was called to the rectorship of the 
church at Columbus, Ga. His career since that time at 
Trinity, New Orleans, and at St. James, Chicago, is known 
to the Church. 

" Again we met at his consecration to the Bishopric of 
Michigan. He said that I had confirmed him, ordained 
him deacon and priest, and that now his wish was that I 
should officiate as the consecrating bishop. 

" The Standing Committee have now requested me to 
officiate at his memorial service. It seemed most fitting 
that I should perform for him this last service, but I did 
not feel equal to it. Accumulating labors and declining 
strength warned me that some other and younger man — 
some one who had been thrown into more intimate rela- 
tions with him during his episcopal life, and had caught 
something of his inspiration — would discharge the duty 
more acceptably. If life be measured by its interest and 
intensity, he died full of years as of honors. Few men 
have compressed more of labor into a brief period. All 
that he had of natural attractiveness and gracious influ- 
ences he consecrated to the Master. His Master was 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS. 59 

satisfied with the servant's work. Ere midday he had 
finished a full life's task. ' Even so, Father ! ' 99 

This is the brief outline of his life; and, as I 
began by saying, it is not the office of such an 
occasion as this even to attempt to fill it out. 
That is a task which demands a much larger 
opportunity, even as I hope it may find to per- 
form it a far more competent hand. 

But even as we review the outline there stand 
out, here and there, incidents which are at once 
characteristic and illustrative of the whole. Bishop 
Harris was pre-eminently a devout man, to whom 
the personal element in religion was before all 
else of consequence. And so it came to pass that 
in his earlier ministry his sympathies went out in 
directions where he thought he saw evidences of 
pre-eminent sancity, reverence, and consecration. 
But where, on nearer approach, he discovered the 
semblances of such things rather than the things 
themselves, no pride of consistency prevented him 
from correcting his previous impressions and modi- 
fying that course of action which they had deter- 
mined. He was a Churchman from patient study, 
and profound conviction based upon that study. 
His law practice had been in the upper courts, 
and, as the friend from whom I have already 
quoted writes of him, just because " his study had 
been constitutional law and equity, and not the 



60 THE DIGNITY OF MAN 

arbitrary rules of practice," and just because " con- 
stitutional law deals with historical facts and the 
historic development of institutions," therefore it 
was that when he came to the study of the Church 
he was ready to appreciate the divine principles 
of its historic life, and its development as an 
institution. To him the Church was the spiritual 
kingdom of God in the world; and hence to him 
every spiritual force and energy in the world is 
really of and belongs to the Church, and men 
may be in and of the Church without themselves 
knowing it, or even while vehemently denying it. 

He did not disesteem his office as a priest of 
God, and neither did he belittle it. The Church 
he held to be a priestly body; and the priesthood 
of the laity is, he maintained, a cardinal fact which 
it is the pressing need of the time to realize, no 
less than that of the ministry. As to the minis- 
try, he held, with increasing emphasis, that it must 
vindicate its claim to that title by ministering in 
all things ; and one of the texts which he oftenest 
preached from was, " The Son of man came not 
to be ministered unto, but to minister." Of the 
Episcopate, he held that it is a function of the 
ministry, which is weakened and not strengthened 
by isolation from whatever is included in that 
larger term. 

As he advanced in years, and in knowledge of 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS. 6 1 

books, of men, and of his age, there is no doubt 
that the prophetic office grew to be of pre-eminent 
consequence in his judgment; and his estimate of 
it, and of its duty in our generation, is set forth 
with impressive force and clearness in the lectures 
which he delivered before the General Theological 
Seminary. 

It was along this line that he aimed to work in 
his efforts for the reunion of Christendom. He 
believed profoundly with De Maistre, that our 
Anglican branch of the Church Catholic resembles 
one of those chemical intermediaries which bring 
into harmonious combination things that are re- 
pugnant to one another; and he held that as 
the Church of the Reconciliation we had a min- 
istry of teaching to discharge with large and in- 
exhaustible patience and love. For this work his 
own experience peculiarly trained him ; for he had 
(rare and happy preparation for his ministry!) 
known the laity as one of them, first as a soldier 
and then as a lawyer, and he could see burning 
questions as bishops, priests, and deacons too 
often fail to do, from the layman's standpoint, 
as well as from his own. 

Moreover, he had been through deep waters in 
his mental experience, and did not escape what 
has been called "the malady of our times." What 
he learned in those hours of darkness he never 



62 THE DIGNITY OF MAX. 

forgot; and when he emerged from them with 
their scars upon his grave and thoughtful coun- 
tenance, he was better fitted than he had ever 
been before to understand the meaning of his 
priesthood, and the nature of his message and 
ministry to his fellow-men. The tone of self- 
confident dogmatism, if it had ever been there, 
had vanished. The childlike humility was deep- 
ened, the love of God and of his fellow-men was 
enlarged, and that noble vision of the Church's 
office in the world, which with such rare elo- 
quence and splendid courage he set forth in his 
address before the recent Conference in Wash- 
ington, became to him a daily and ennobling 
inspiration. 

And thus swiftly he had ripened and greatened, 
until men's eyes all over the land were turned to 
him with ever-growing appreciation, interest, and 
hope. " Among all the children of Israel there 
was not a goodlier person than he : from his 
shoulders and upward he was higher than any 
of the people." 

" From his shoulders upward." No one who 
ever saw Bishop Harris could fail to be impressed 
by his noble and stately presence. Physical quali- 
ties are not always, nor perhaps often, indications 
of those that are higher, and greatness of stature 
or bulk may very easily be accompanied by 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS. 63 

meagreness of intellect and meanness of nature. 
But Saul was great, we read, " from his shoulders 
upward; " and I suppose the w T ords may be taken 
to indicate a certain kingly quality in mien and 
bearing which indicated the royal gifts which 
animated the man. At any rate the words, when 
we think of Bishop Harris in connection with 
them, have a peculiar and pregnant significance. 
As the head crowns the body, and as so the 
noblest part of a man is " from his shoulders 
upward," so in him these qualities of which the 
home is the brain, and the head with its sensitive 
and expressive features is the fittest symbol, were 
the noblest and most regal of all. 

I. But, first of all, let me not forget to say he 
had great qualities of heart. Able men are not 
always — not very often, I was tempted to say — 
lovable men, and the reason is not far to seek. 
But Bishop Harris was pre-eminently a lovable 
man ; and that simply because his own nature was 
enriched by a strong spring of sympathy and 
tender regard for his fellows. No pride of intel- 
lect made him imperious, impatient, or contemptu- 
ous. He drew to him the hearts of children, of 
poor men and women, of those perplexed and in 
trouble, of the miserable and outcast, and made 
them captive by his own love for them, and by his 
ever helpful revelation of that love. 



6\ THE DIGNITY OF MAX. 

" He was the best friend I had in this world/' 
said a prominent business man in Chicago, whose 
words, as they appeared in a journal of that city, 
I cannot refrain from quoting here: — 

u There are many in this city to-day who at the turning- 
point of their commercial career, when everything looked 
black, ruin staring them in the face, have sought out the 
kindly pastor, and in the seclusion of his study found re- 
lief. The world has marvelled at the wonderful recupera- 
tive spirit Chicago business men have shown in times of 
commercial disaster. A different tale would be told if 
the walls of Dr. Harris's old study could recount what 
they have seen and heard. ( Be honorable, and among 
honest men you have nought to fear,' was his maxim. 

w I remember one man who had been living in rather 
expensive style, but who, by a sudden turn in the wheat 
market, found himself on the verge of collapse. None of 
his friends had the least intimation of the state of affairs ; 
but, as he afterward told me, Dr. Harris approached him 
one day, and in curious manner led up the conversation 
to a point where nothing short of a deliberate falsehood 
could help him to conceal his straits from his pastor. 

" ' I never could remember,' he said, in relating the 
circumstances, 1 how it all came about. But we had been 
laughing and joking only a few minutes before, when I 
found myself opening up my inmost secrets to the doctor, 
and I have never ceased to thank God that I did so. He 
took pencil and paper, and when I had given him a state- 
ment of my terrible condition, he proceeded, like a skil- 
ful surgeon, to lay bare the wounds that were killing me, 
not sparing me one jot in matters that I had always ex- 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS. 



65 



pected to bury with myself; but before we had completed 
the investigation, he had shown me a way out of my diffi- 
culties, arduous enough it is true, but nevertheless a safe 
and sure one, as the sequel proved. I often spoke to him 
about the matter later, and was especially curious to know 
where he had obtained such a mastery of intricate busi- 
ness matters, — a point on which clergymen are usually 
the most ignorant. Said he, " True sympathy between 
pastor and people can never exist unless the former 
studies the evils which may afflict the latter, and vice 
versa. I find the people here sympathetic in my troubles 
and difficulties, and why should I not reciprocate the 
feeling ? " 

Why, indeed, one may well say, if only one has 
the gift to feel, and the rarer gift to give expres- 
sion to that feeling ! 

Let me reproduce here one other incident 
illustrative of that nobility of the heart which I 
think you will agree with me was so pre-eminently 
characteristic of Bishop Harris. I take it from 
the same journal, and its homely and outdoor 
characteristics render it in no wise unworthy, it 
seems to me, of some more prominent record than 
it has already found : — 

" We were walking along one of the streets of New 
Orleans," said a friend of the bishop, st when we met a 
big rough fellow who directly he caught sight of the 
bishop came to a sudden halt and seemed doubting 
whether to approach or not. 

5 



66 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



" 6 Well, John ! ' cried the bishop, extending his hand to 
the man. The fellow wiped his huge palm on his cor- 
duroy trousers before venturing to touch the proffered 
hand, and his bronzed features fairly beamed with pleas- 
ure at the bishop's recognition. Noticing the man's ner- 
vousness, I withdrew a few paces, as I knew of old that 
it was more than probable that the conversation would 
be one wherein an outsider would be de trop. 

" Pretty soon the bishop rejoined me and told me that 
the man was a lumberman for whom he had done a tri- 
fling service in Upper Michigan. The nature of the tri- 
fling service I did not inquire, as I knew how apt the 
bishop was to minimize his own efforts. 

" The next day I was out walking alone, when I met 
the Michigan man. Recognizing me as a friend of the 
bishop, he stopped to speak, and held out a brawny hand 
to me. 

" 6 Ise mighty glad to see you, sir/ he said. ' I reckon 
you be a friend of the bishop.' 

" 6 Yes, sir, I am proud to say I am.' 

" ' Proud? Well, I should think so. Ther ain't a man 
in the hull country what shouldn't be proud to shake 
hands with him/ 

" ' Do they think so much of him in Michigan as that?' 
I inquired. 

" ' As much as that? I tell you what it is/ — confiden- 
tially, — ' ther boys has been talkin' among themselves, 
and they Ve about decided to make him Governor of 
Michigan.' " 

The incident is homely, I have said, and some 
of you may think it scarcely congruous with the 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS. 67 

solemnities of this place and this occasion. But 
when one goes beneath the rough exterior of the 
incident, what a fine strong fibre of sympathy, of 
reality, of large-heartedness shines through it all! 
Bishop Harris never forgot his good-breeding, his 
refinement, his somewhat stately and (alas for 
the age in which it is so ! ) somewhat old-fashioned 
courtesy. But then, he never forgot his manhood, 
nor the manhood of his fellow-men. To put him- 
self in touch with that, always to recognize and 
honor it, no matter what the garb it wore, — this was 
the characteristic of one whose warm and catholic 
kindliness of nature, whose breadth of vision and 
largeness of sympathy made the motto of Terence, 
" Humanus sum," and the rest, — u I am a man, 
and nothing human is alien to me," — his motto in 
all the manifold activities of his tireless life. 

2. But again, these great qualities of the heart 
were dominated in Bishop Harris by qualities of 
the mind which were equally great. We may not 
forget, in recalling the rare man whom we are here 
this evening to remember, that his work was ended 
at a time when the best work of many men is just 
beginning. The years from twenty-five to forty- 
five are years of active service, it is true, in most 
lives, but they are no less years of the education 
and ripening of the best powers. And yet when 
these were ended with Bishop Harris, he had al- 



68 THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 

ready accomplished tasks which, both as to char- 
acter and quality, are, I venture to think, some of 
the most memorable in the intellectual history of 
our Church and our time. To some of them I 
have already alluded, and to others I can refer but 
briefly. But taking two only of them, they illus- 
trate the highest quality of intellectual excellence, 
as it seems to me, in two very opposite directions. 
One of the things which Bishop Harris was per- 
mitted to accomplish of largest and most impres- 
sive significance was the founding, at the seat of 
the University of Michigan, of Hobart Hall and 
the Baldwin lectureship. The problem of Chris- 
tian education is one of which the Church has 
attempted a solution in many ways, and nowhere 
with conspicuous success. She has scattered her 
energies, and, too often, missed her noblest oppor- 
tunities. 1 Nothing, as I conceive, has indicated so 
unerringly the line of action along which these 
mistakes must be corrected, as the line which 
Bishop Harris thought out, and amid many diffi- 
culties so successfully built upon. It stamped 
him as one with a statesmanlike vision, and the 
rarest wisdom and discrimination in converting 
into a potential reality a really noble conception. 
It revealed the true office of the Church, and the 
true method and agency for best discharging that 
office. Undoubtedly, as someone has said of him, 

1 See page 75. 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS. 69 

he was happy in a rare opportunity. Ah ! yes. 
It is what the world says of those whom they are 
fond of calling " lucky men." But it is the men 
who, when the rare opportunity presents itself, 
have the wisdom to discern and the courage to 
seize and improve it, who have been its leaders 
and teachers and masters from the beginning, and 
that, verily, by divine right. 

And so of another remarkable feature in the 
intellectual life of the late Bishop of Michigan, — 
I mean his " Bohlen Lectures on Christianity and 
Civil Society/' I am at a loss to understand the 
strange failure of his contemporaries to recognize 
the rare qualities of this really great work, and I 
can only explain it by assuming that it must some- 
how have escaped the notice of thinking men. 
Nothing has been (so far as I saw them) more 
superficial, more utterly inadequate in almost every 
element of intelligent appreciation, than the re- 
views of this book which appeared when the first 
edition was published. A second has recently fol- 
lowed it, in allusion to which I observe that a 
religious journal lately remarked that upon the 
question at issue Bishop Harris had not spoken 
the last word. Possibly not; but, so far as I know, 
he has spoken the clearest, most discerning, and 
most conclusive word which has been spoken in 
our generation. I speak with what some of those 



JO THE DIGNITY OF MAN 

who hear me may regard as undue confidence in 
this matter. Of course I speak only my own con- 
victions. But having been led during the past 
year to read some forty volumes by different au- 
thors on the same general subject, I can only say 
that the one writer among them all who seemed 
first to have started out with a firm grasp of cer- 
tain great principles and then to have followed 
them in a philosophic temper, so calm and serene 
as to make his pages an increasing delight, to their 
logical conclusions, and that with a reasoning at 
once lucid, vigorous, and irresistible, was the dear 
friend and teacher whom we are here to mourn 
to-night. I am no prophet nor the son of a 
prophet ; but believe me when I tell you that the 
question which in those lectures to which I have 
referred your late bishop discussed, — the question 
of the relations to each other of the Church and 
the State, — is a question fraught, in our not very 
distant national future, with grave and portentous 
issues. And no less firmly am I persuaded that 
in the solution of that question and all the kin- 
dred questions of the relations of Christianity to 
human society, the great but imperfectly under- 
stood principles which Bishop Harris, with the 
hand of a master, so clearly and conclusively de- 
monstrated, are the principles upon which those 
issues can alone be permanently and happily set- 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS. 7 1 

tied. To have rendered such a service to his age 
and the Church, — this is to have made them both, 
I think you will agree with me, his lasting debtors. 

3. But greater than even intellectual excellence 
is moral excellence, — and rarer ! And here, I 
think, our father and brother departed shone 
brightest of all. I do not know that he was sin- 
gular in a clear perception of the right. Many 
men have that, though it is oftener than many 
of us think clouded by an apparent incapacity to 
appreciate nice moral distinctions ; but in Bishop 
Harris a fine moral intuition had been ennobled 
and strengthened by scrupulous discipline and the 
highest inspiration. His conscience enlightened 
by the Holy Spirit, and not any wish, ambition, 
or appetite, was his master. With singular gen- 
tleness he united singular fearlessness ; and if a 
thing appeared to him to be clearly his duty, 
that, with him, was enough. He was not impa- 
tient of counsel. It always seemed to me one of 
the best indications of his real greatness that he so 
often sought it; but when he had received it, he 
formed his own judgment in simple dependence 
upon God and in utter fearlessness as to the con- 
sequences. A friend, 1 to whose recollections of 
him I have already referred, has recalled an inci- 
dent in the General Convention of 1874, to which 

1 Rev Dr. John Fulton. 



72 THE DIGNITY OF MAX. 

Dr. Harris (as he then was) was a deputy, which 
impressively illustrates this. It occurred in con- 
nection with a discussion in regard to the ritual 
law of the Church, which, he maintained, was to 
be found primarily in the prayer-book, and which 
therefore could not be constitutionally changed or 
modified by canon. The report of a committee 
on this subject, which took a different view, was 
adopted by the House of Deputies by an im- 
mense majority; but Dr. Harris voted against it 
with only five others, and these deputies who were 
supposed to be identified with what are known as 
most " extreme" views. He expected that his vote 
would cost him his parish, and said so ; but that 
consideration did not cause him to hesitate or 
to swerve from what he regarded as the path of 
duty. It is an interesting and suggestive fact, 
which may here be incidentally noted, that the 
House of Bishops concurred in his position, and 
rejected the proposed canon. 

Such an act was typical. If I were at liberty, 
I might match it with similar action which distin- 
guished his course when, later, he came to have a 
seat in the House of Bishops; and you, I am sure, 
who knew and watched him in the rare openness 
and transparency of his daily walk and conversa- 
tion as he went in and out among you, could con- 
firm it by abundant testimonies which would be 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS, 73 

the result of your own long-continued observation. 
He was a power in this community, wherever men 
came to know him, because of his large sympa- 
thies, his strong intellect, but most of all by his 
unbending integrity. There is one relation in 
which, did time permit, I should rejoice to speak 
of him, — I mean his relation to his clergy, which, 
if I could tell its story here, would pre-eminently 
illustrate this. With what affectionate solicitude 
he concerned himself for their interests, watched 
for their welfare, sympathized with their burdens, 
counselled them in their perplexities and fail- 
ures. Is not all this true? Yes; but is it not 
most of all true that in that paternal and judicial 
relation which he sustained to them he forever 
held up before them the standard of a high moral 
ideal, and in his own words and acts consistently 
translated righteous principles into righteous con- 
duct? And this it was, more than all else, that, 
in all that he was and did, made him a power for 
God and for good. 

It would violate the proprieties of this place if 
I were to speak of your bishop in those relations, 
most sacred and most tender, which he sustained 
to those nearest to him. But the Office for the 
Consecration of Bishops declares that a bishop 
must be one that " ruleth well his own house; 
and the influence of such an example as his in 



74 THE DIGNITY OF MAN 

every domestic relation will long live to be a per- 
fume and an inspiration in the city and to the 
people among whom he lived. Those manly and 
tender graces in which he was so rich, the never- 
wearying unselfishness, the patient and benignant 
gentleness, — ah ! shall we ever forget them? God 
forbid ! 

For to one at least who to-day recalls these 
rare and winning traits which so enriched and 
ennobled his personal character they will never 
cease to be a spell of most potent and pathetic 
power. I may not trust myself to speak of 
what I owe to him whom we have come here to 
mourn and to honor. I may not venture to give 
the rein to those deepest feelings of grateful love 
and veneration which are stirred in me by the 
memory of that pure and knightly manhood. 
Words are too poor for the expression of emo- 
tions which are intertwined with the deepest and 
most sacred affection ; but you and I, — brethren 
beloved in the common Master ! — you and I may 
well bless God for such a life, for such a work, for 
such a friend ! Too short was that life and work, 
do we say? Yes, as the world measures life and 
work; but oh, how round and rich and complete 
in the best fruitage of Christian graces, of noble 
service, of a rare and royal manhood ! Smitten, 
sorrowful, and bereaved, we must needs own our- 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS. 



75 



selves ; but happy the household, happy the dio- 
cese, happy the State and the nation, that have 
such a father and such a citizen and son ! To- 
night we hang his portrait — that kingly image of 
him who " from his shoulders upward," in every 
rarest grace and noblest quality, was loftier and 
kinglier than his fellows — high upon the wall 
of memory, and in the chamber of our deepest 
reverence. With that prophet of the elder time 
we look up, as the form of our friend and leader 
vanishes from our view, and cry, " My father, my 
father ! the chariots of Israel and the horsemen 
thereof! " And then, translating the prayer of the 
lonely Elisha into our Christian speech, shall we 
not also cry, " O thou Mighty One, who wast to 
this thy departed servant Leader and Lord, let a 
double portion of his spirit, which was thy Spirit, 
be upon these his children and thine ! " 

Note. — In what is said here of the educational work of the Church, 
reference is had rather to the conditions under which such work has been 
undertaken than to the paramount importance of that work, concerning 
which there is, at any rate in the mind of the writer, not the smallest 
doubt. But the history of the University in our mother country may 
well instruct us in that which is the best wisdom in our own. Keble and 
Selwyn colleges have wisely been planted, not apart by themselves, as 
isolated schools of Church teaching and life, but close to great centres 
of education, with all their consequent advantages of libraries, lectures, 
and the stimulating atmosphere of a large and generous intellectual life. 
Our Church colleges have no less claim upon our sympathy and support, 
because in their beginnings the advantages of this course were not recog- 
nized. But, on the other hand, the wisdom which was first to see it must 
needs be owned. Churchmen owe it to good work always done, though 
not always perhaps in the wisest way, to " strengthen the things that re- 
main." They owe it no less to work which yet remains to be done, to mix 
their doing of it with a frank recognition of the situation. — H. C. P. 



Select Jkrmonsu 

BY SAMUEL SMITH HARRIS, D.D., LL.D. 



* 



Select Sermons* 



SERMON I. 



SHEPHERDHOOD. 1 



He that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. — 
St. John x. 2. 

r I ^HE simple lesson which our Lord intended 



JL to teach in this familiar passage has often 
been strangely mistaken. The minds of men have 
been so fixed upon certain ecclesiastical conclu- 
sions which have been commonly derived from it, 
that the simpler but far profounder teaching which 
the Master had in mind to give has been over- 
looked. He was not defending the formal author- 
ity of his own or of any office. He was not dis- 
cussing the regularity or lawfulness of his own or 
of any ministry. He was not pointing out the 
mode of entrance into shepherdhood, but he was 
telling how the function of all true shepherdhood 
must be discharged. He was laying down the rule 

1 Preached in St. Paul's Church, Detroit, Sunday morning, 
Sept. 21, 1879; being the first sermon delivered by Bishop Harris 
after his consecration as Bishop of Michigan. 




8o 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



of good conduct and right service in all true lead- 
ership, — a rule which He Himself exemplified 
and fulfilled, and which all must obey w r ho hope in 
any degree to be worthy leaders of men. 

Perhaps a brief examination of the context will 
enable us to apprehend our Lord's meaning a lit- 
tle more freshly. The term " shepherd" was com- 
monly used among the Jews to denote the ruler 
or leader of the people. Such leaders the Phari- 
sees claimed to be; and just before these words 
were uttered they had asserted their leadership in 
an exceedingly offensive fashion. Our Lord had 
opened the eyes of one who had been born blind ; 
and the Pharisees, in attempting to persuade him 
that had been blind to deny the power of Jesus, 
had haughtily treated him as an altogether inferior 
being. When he replied, they reviled him for pre- 
suming to claim any sort of equality with them- 
selves. " Thou wast altogether born in sin, and 
dost thou teach us ? " So, when they w r ere un- 
able to use him for their purpose, they cast him 
out of the synagogue as one accursed. Our Lord 
beheld all this, and said in effect: " Do ye claim 
to be the shepherds of this people? I tell you 
nay: he that entereth not by the door into the 
sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the 
same is a thief and a robber; but he that enter- 
eth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep." 
The fault w 7 hich He denounced in them was that 
they did not identify themselves in work and sym- 
pathy with the people. The sheep enter in by 
the door into the sheepfold. The true shepherd 



SHEPHERD HO 0£>. 



81 



enters in by the same door with the sheep. The 
Pharisees separated themselves from the people, 
climbing up some other way, and supposed that 
they were asserting and exercising their shepherd- 
hood by their exclusiveness. But Jesus said, Xo ; 
the true shepherd proves his shepherdhood, and 
realizes it by identifying himself with his flock, 
and entering in by the same lowly door with them. 
" He that entereth in by the door is the shepherd 
of the sheep." 

It is perfectly obvious, then, that Jesus was not 
discussing the question of the credentials of au- 
thority, or of the formal commission of shepherd- 
hood ; but He was pointing out the only way in 
which shepherdhood of any kind can discharge its 
function and realize its power. He was propound- 
ing a lesson which it behooves all men to ponder 
well who hope to influence their fellow-men for 
good. Rank, office, order, culture, property, — be 
the authority, the privilege, the right of these 
what they may, the eternal law of God, as exem- 
plified in the life of His Son, and taught in His 
Holy Word, and illustrated in human history, is 
this : that none of these, no matter how commis- 
sioned or sent, can exercise any real shepherdhood 
over men except as they are in sympathy with 
them. This is true in Church and State: of the 
employers of labor; of the heads of households; 
of civil rulers and political leaders ; of bishops, 
priests, and deacons, — the power to lead men lies 
in sympathizing with them and walking in the 
same way with them. " He that entereth in by 

6 



82 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



the door is the shepherd of the sheep." Saying 
this, the great Master spake not merely as a mor- 
alist and sage, but also as a statesman. He pro- 
pounded a new principle in social and political 
economy which princes and diplomatists have 
hardly yet grown up to the grandeur of, though 
the vicissitudes of falling thrones and changing 
dynasties have been confirming it for thousands 
of years. For man has always been prone to 
think that eminence of gifts or station would give 
him power; that pomp or wealth or place would 
enable him to exercise dominion. But Jesus ut- 
terly reversed all this when He said, " Whosoever 
will be great among you, let him be your min- 
ister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let 
him be your servant: even as the Son of man 
came not to be ministered unto but to minister, 
and to give His life a ransom for many." Saying 
this He did not repudiate distinction of order, but 
rather pointed out the eternal purpose for which 
it is ordained. He did not renounce authority, 
but rather showed the only way to vindicate and 
exercise it. For He said in another place: u Ye 
call me Master and Lord : and ye say well ; for 
so I am." But because I am your Lord and Mas- 
ter, I am among you as one that serveth. So 
here He taught the same great lesson. The man 
of influence is the man of sympathy; the man of 
power is the man of service. The shepherd en- 
ters in by the sheep's door; he leads them in and 
out and finds pasture for them. He knows them, 
and calls them by name. They know his voice, 



SHE PHE RDHO OD. 



83 



and will come when he calls them. He that walks 
with the sheep is the shepherd of the sheep. 

Let us take the term " shepherd," then, in this 
its broadest signification. Let us think for a lit- 
tle while of shepherdhood as any kind of worthy 
leadership among men. Surely he that aspires 
to it in any walk of life entertains a noble ambi- 
tion. Indeed, to have and to exert some kind of 
real influence over men is the only ambition that 
is worthy of a man. Give him any kind of power 
but this, clothe him with any other authority, and 
all that he has will be, without this, a weariness 
and a degradation, Let the widest proprietorship 
be assigned to him, let him claim the cattle on 
a thousand hills, let the rivers as they leap from 
the mountain and run to the sea not escape from 
his broad domains; yet the village Hampden who 
leads his rustic tenantry at the hustings, or the 
village poet who writes the songs which the peo- 
ple love to sing, may be a greater and more kingly 
soul than he. For the one is the lord of acres, 
the other is the ruler of souls. The one calls the 
hills and the fields his own, but the other moves 
and controls the immortal spirits of men. To do 
this worthily and well is a royal calling. To rule 
men is grander than to rule the stars in their 
courses; and to lead men is grander than to rule 
them. To lead men onward and upward, — this is 
to be a prince indeed: this is worthy of gentlemen 
and sons of God. 

But how is such influence to be attained? How 
is such power to be won? To this the mere 



8 4 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 



economist might say, " Get station or place ; get 
official authority : that is power." But the answer 
is obvious. There is a distinction between the 
formal authority to lead men on the one hand 
and the power to lead them on the other; and 
the form of authority, to be effective, must be ac- 
companied by the power. United, they constitute 
God's order for the guidance of the world : dis- 
united, they stand as confusion on the one hand, 
and official incompetency on the other. Organi- 
zation must be endowed with life to be efficient, 
and among men mere office-holding is not shep- 
herdhood, mere station is not power. 

The materialist might say, " Get money: that is 
power." But I answer, Xo, — not over the souls 
of men. It may command their hands or buy the 
product of their busy brains; but money, no mat- 
ter how lavishly or how judiciously employed, can- 
not control the movements of the human heart. 

Another w r ould say, " Get knowledge : that is 
power." I answer, No : it may be power over the 
rivers and over the seas, over the lightnings and 
the clouds; it may summon the spirits of the air, 
like tricksy Ariels, to be its messengers, and use 
for its own purpose the leap of the cataract and 
the sweep of the storm ; but something more than 
knowledge is required to rule men. It has no 
skill to touch the springs of human action, or to 
sweep the trembling chords of the human heart. 

And so you may enumerate all the instrumental- 
ities by means of which man has sought in time 
past or still seeks to rule, and as you tell them 



SHEPHERDHOOD. 



85 



off, each must be rejected as powerless in the 
kingdom of souls, until we come at last to this 
great truth, which Christ uttered as the secret of 
the power of all true leadership and shepherdhood. 
He said, Sympathy with men is power over men. 
He that loves is he that leads. He that serves 
is he that rules. " He that entereth in by the 
door is the shepherd of the sheep." 

Think now for a moment, and you will see why 
it must be so. Man is free. The soul is free in 
the truest, deepest sense of the word. God royally 
made it so, and even He cannot control it by 
any merely external force or power. It is free to 
think ; it is free to will and choose ; it is free to 
love ; and no mere force or authority from with- 
out can control it in these operations in which its 
sovereign selfhood is realized. You may chain 
the limbs of a man, — you may coerce his actions 
or even his words ; but how can you get into com- 
munion with the soul, and rule its will and its af- 
fections? There is only one way. If you would 
influence men intimately, profoundly, really, no 
matter what your authority or station, you must 
enter into sympathy with them. You must walk 
in the same path and enter in by the same door, 
or you can never be the shepherd of the sheep. 
This is what Saint Paul meant when he sang the 
praise of love. Among men love is power. 
" Though I speak with the tongues of men and of 
angels, . . . and though I have the gift of prophecy, 
and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge, 
and though I have all faith, so that I could re- 



86 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



move mountains, . . . and though I bestow all my 
goods to feed the poor, and though I give my 
body to be burned, and have not love, it profit- 
eth me nothing." And a greater than Saint Paul 
taught the same lesson and confirmed it by his 
own Divine experience. The Good Shepherd 
proved and illustrated His own Good Shepherd- 
hood by sympathy and love. It was by no flash 
of splendor or miracle of external power that He 
proved His Divine leadership over the hearts of 
men ; but by coming to walk with them, to toil 
and hunger and suffer with them. He entered 
into mortal life by the same lowly door of hu- 
man birth; He passed through it by the same 
path of toil and daily care; He made His exit 
from it through the same portal of suffering 
and death. In life and death He walked with 
the sheep. Therefore He could say, " I am the 
good shepherd, not merely because I am commis- 
sioned and sent of my Father, not merely because 
I wield the power of omnipotence," but " I am 
the good shepherd," He said, because "I know my 
sheep and am known of mine." " The shepherd 
calleth his own sheep by name and leadeth them 
out. And when he putteth forth his own sheep, 
he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him, 
for they know his voice. He that walketh with 
the sheep, is the shepherd of the sheep." 

The applications of this great principle are mani- 
fold, and extend to all the relations of life. It is 
the principle, in the first place, of all good gov- 
ernment. The good ruler must be a shepherd, 



SHEPHERD HOOD. 



87 



identifying himself, not in principle or opinion 
necessarily, but in sympathy with his people. 
Hence all good rulers, whether of high birth or 
low degree, whether kings like Victor Emmanuel 
or commoners like Washington or Lincoln, have 
all been men of the people. In precise proportion 
to the greatness and reality of their influence they 
have been shepherds every one. 

So long as such rulers are content to be shep- 
herds, walking with and leading their people, they 
retain their power; but the moment they begin 
to withdraw into privilege and prerogative they 
begin to lose it. While David sat daily in the 
gate to meet the people and right their wrongs, 
he ruled them, and they gave him a glad obedi- 
ence. But when he withdrew into the exclusive- 
ness of prerogative, the traitor Absalom came and 
stole their hearts away. So long as David relied 
on his shepherdhood, he reigned as a king; but 
when he forgot his shepherdhood and began to 
rely on his royalty, he lost his power, and came 
nigh losing his crown. 

In this principle is to be found, moreover, the 
solution of the great social question of the day. 
The antagonism between labor and capital can be 
avoided; the rich and poor can be reconciled; 
intelligence and wealth can attain their rightful 
influence in the State and in society when intelli- 
gence and wealth enter into active sympathy with 
the poor. Let the rich and educated regard their 
wealth and intelligence as a sacred trust to be used 
in the service of their fellow-men ; and then let 



88 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



them identify themselves in sympathy with the 
masses, and they will be the trusted leaders of the 
masses. Not otherwise; for the poor are just like 
other men. They are going to follow their shep- 
Jia'ds, — those who walk with them and sympa- 
thize with them. And until the rich and intelligent 
in this free land become sufficiently Christianized 
to so identify themselves with the poor, they are 
not going to lead them. " He that entereth in by 
the door is the shepherd of the sheep." 

But above all, this principle defines the mission 
of the Church of God. Venerable as she is above 
all the institutions of time, of Divine origin and 
appointment, clothed with authority from on high, 
set to be the witness and keeper of the truth, and 
commissioned to transmit it to the remotest gen- 
eration, we who know and love her, yield to her 
divine authority our glad obedience. Yet the 
Church is more than a witness and keeper of the 
truth ; she is more than a teacher sent from God ; 
she is more than a divinely appointed polity to 
be perpetuated, or a divinely instituted authority 
to be respected and enforced. She is sent to 
scatter abroad the gifts of grace ; to be the instru- 
mentality in time of Him who, though unseen, is 
still the Good Shepherd. He works with her 
hands, He speaks with her voice, and it is still the 
Shepherd's voice, calling His own sheep by name, 
and leading them to the green pastures and beside 
the still waters. Were I asked, then, what is the 
chief manward function of the Church of God, I 
would say, Shepherdhood over the souls of men; 



SHEPHERDHOOD. 



8 9 



shepherdhood toward all whom Christ came to 
seek and to save ; shepherdhood not merely to- 
ward those which are safely folded, but toward the 
lost and scattered sheep which stray bewildered 
upon the dark mountains ; to realize on earth the 
will and the prayer of Him who not only said, " I 
am the good shepherd," but who also said, " Other 
sheep I have, which are not of this fold ; them also 
must I bring, and they shall hear my voice ; and 
there shall be one fold, and one shepherd." 

But above all, the true shepherd must be a man 
of that genuine sensibility of soul that feels all that 
concerns his fellow-men ; that feels their sorrows, 
shares their joys, instinctively divines their difficul- 
ties, generously shares their burdens. This is the 
distinguishing characteristic of all great Christian 
leaders, and in this is the hiding of their power. 
Such sympathy cannot be simulated ; it is im- 
possible to play a part in this. A man must have 
a genuine respect and a genuine affection for men 
as men, or he cannot be their shepherd. At the 
remarkable meeting that was held some two years 
ago at Westminster Abbey to take steps for erect- 
ing a monument to the late Dean Stanley, it was 
said by more than one of the speakers who knew r 
him well, that the secret of his remarkable power 
over men was his many-sided sympathy. He was 
a genuine lover of his kind. He loved men as 
men; not for what they had, nor for what they 
thought, nor for what they did ; but he loved them, 
regardless of class or creed, as men. It was a 
wondrous and precious gift; and he used it so 



go 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



that when he died there were three continents that 
mourned him, though there were few of those who 
mourned him that altogether agreed with him. So 
of the great dean it is not too much to say that it 
was not his learning, nor his rank, nor his riches, 
nor his presence, that made him a great shepherd- 
hearted prophet, for such he undoubtedly was; 
but it was his humble walk with God, and his 
many-sided sympathy with his kind. In the minds 
and hearts of many thousands who utterly differed 
from him, this redeemed his mistakes ; and he is 
already numbered among the illustrious abbots 
of Westminster, among the worthies of England, 
among the great shepherd-prophets of the Anglo- 
Saxon race. 

You will pardon me, my brethren, if I venture 
to say in this, my first public utterance among 
you, that it is with thoughts like these that I have 
prayed to come to begin my ministry here : to be 
in some humble measure, but oh, in Christ's deep 
and lowly sense, a servant of my brethren ; to take 
heed unto the flock over which the Holy Ghost 
hath made me overseer; to strive to know the 
sheep and call them by name; to lead them forth, 
and to have the sheep know my voice and come at 
my calling. And this it is to be a shepherd in- 
deed; this it is to be a bishop of souls in the 
church of God, — not to be ministered unto, but 
to minister. This is the divine rule of headship ; 
and oh, may it be mine as I go in and out among 
you ! 

But it is not alone of myself that I would speak, 



SHEPHERDII OD. 



91 



or even chiefly of myself. You and I are all called, 
each in our station and degree, to help make this 
dear old Church of ours, which God hath sent to 
this Western land, realize her high vocation, and 
be a shepherd church to all this mighty people, 
by leading in every good word and work, by show- 
ing the world that there is nothing good that we 
have not a sympathy with, by doing all that in us 
lies to bring them back to the old path, and to 
lead them in the better way by the kindly minis- 
tries of gentleness and love ; to teach an alienated 
people to see in the Church itself a shepherd's 
care, and to hear a shepherd's voice. To do this 
is to be true teachers in the Church of God. And 
you and I are called to be shepherds as individ- 
uals in our places and in our separate vocations. 
Every father and every mother, every employer 
of labor, and every head of a household ought to 
remember this. It is a great privilege, that of 
being the guides and leaders of men, — in this way 
to be shepherds in the Israel of God. 

One summer morning a traveller was standing 
upon the side of a mighty mountain. A beautiful 
lake spread out before him, casting back like a 
mirror the flood of golden sunlight that fell upon 
it, while above his head the morning mists were 
weaving a fantastic coronet to crown the king of 
the mountains. As he stood there drinking in the 
beauty, he saw a shepherd of that country pass 
along the pathway by a brook, leading a flock of 
sheep to a higher and greener pasture that was 
above on the side of the mountain. The trav- 



92 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



eller called to the shepherd and said, "Give me 
your hand, and come up over the rock, for you will 
get wet as you walk along the pathway!" But he 
said, " Xa, na; the sheep canna climb the rock, 
and they wadna stan' still gin I clum up there. 
I mun gang before the sheep, gin I wad lead 
them ! " And the traveller said : " This, then, 
is shepherdhood, — shepherdhood like that of 
Moses, or Joshua, or Paul, or Selwyn, or Cole- 
ridge Patterson, or like the shepherdhood of 
our own beloved leaders of the flock who have 
entered into their rest. This is true shepherd- 
hood, — not to climb up some other way, but to 
walk before the sheep." Oh, brethren, may such 
a shepherdhood be yours and mine, and so may 
it be our privilege to keep around us and about 
us all those whom we love ! And as our spring- 
time flows into summer, and our summer begins 
to languish into autumn and winter, may it be 
our blessed privilege to lead them higher and 
higher up the mountain-side where the greener 
pastures are, till at last we shall come to see the 
gloriously fashioned door of the heavenly fold 
swinging open to admit us and those we bring 
with us, its golden hinges turning and gleaming 
in the light of the everlasting Sun, what time we 
begin to catch, as the sounds of this world die 
away, the sweeter voices trained to know the Good 
Shepherd's voice, and He shall come forth to meet 
us and lead us into the green pastures and beside 
the still waters, to bask forever and forever be- 
neath the smile of God. 



SERMON II. 



THE DIGNITY OF MAX. 1 

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our like- 
ness : and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and 
over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, 
and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So 
God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he 
him. — Gen. i. 26, 27. 

A GREAT poet has profoundly said that " the 
- proper study of mankind is man." It is a 
truth which all generations of thinking men have 
need to recognize and ponder ; for a right estimate 
of what man is and may become lies at the founda- 
tion of all social and political philosophy. I count 
it one of the peculiar misfortunes of our day and 
time that this noble study has been so much neg- 
lected. For more than a generation the tendency 

1 Preached in St. Paul's Church, Detroit, on the morning of 
the first Sunday in Advent, 1884. Preached also in St. Thomas 
Church, Winchester, England, on Sunday morning, July 15, 1888. 
This was the last sermon delivered by Bishop Harris, and the one 
during which he had that momentary unconsciousness which was 
the beginning of his last illness. It was described in a letter from 
the Rev. Arthur H. Sole, as follows: " He preached us a noble 
sermon, ' Let us make man in our image/ etc., and he dwelt upon 
man's infinite possibilities of good, and his potential power. When 
he had preached for about fifteen minutes, he suddenly became 
silent, and for a moment I felt most anxious. Then he braced 
himself with an effort, and finished his sermon entirely without 
manuscript, in a manner that touched and helped us all." 



94 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



of human thought has been in a different direction. 
The wonderful development of a material civiliza- 
tion has engrossed the attention and absorbed the 
energy of the race. In the midst of steam-enginery, 
human agency has seemed to be of less account. 
The machine has seemed in large degree to sup- 
plant the man. The study of things and not of 
ideas, of relations and not of principles, of forms 
and combinations and not of the power which sus- 
tains them, have made the age in which we live, 
with all its splendor of material achievement, a 
superficial age, in which the true dignity of the 
soul and the true sanctities of human life are often 
obscured and forgotten. To this is due in large 
part the notorious decay of statesmanship; the 
shallowness of our contemporary thinking ; the em- 
piricism which is the reproach of our professions; 
the desecration of home and of marriage ; the 
alienation of classes and the disregard of human 
rights and human duties, which are likely at any 
time to lead to conflict and disaster. For this, the 
only remedy is to call men back to a sense of what 
their true interests are ; and the first step in this 
process must be a return to a true estimate of 
man's dignity and destiny. For man is the lord 
of all beneath him, and the witness for all above 
him, designed to be earth's sovereign and God's 
likeness; and unless we know him in some real 
sense we cannot understand the world or time, to 
say nothing of eternity and God. 

But beyond all question a right estimate of what 
man is and may become must lie at the foundation 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 



95 



of all religious philosophy. It is therefore alto- 
gether in the line of my duty as chief pastor of 
souls, that I ask you to begin with me this morn- 
ing a brief study of man's dignity and destiny. 
From this we will pass, on next Sunday morning, 
to a study of the, indignity and enormity of that 
sin which so dishonors and debases man's regal 
and aspiring nature ; and then to the wonder and 
the power of redemption, through which this foul 
dishonor is done away; and finally to the joy of 
that eternal life which beginning here shall last 
forever. - Our subject this morning, then, shall be 
man's dignity and destiny; and for a text I turn 
to this venerable record of human history which 
tells us of man's beginning, by what power and in 
what image he was fashioned, and into what like- 
ness he was designed to grow. a And God said, 
Let us make man in our image, after our like- 
ness. ... So God created man in his own image, 
in the image of God created he him." 

It is no part of my present purpose to discuss 
the manner of man's creation. As Christians we 
need not be at all disturbed if in the course of sci- 
entific investigation it should be established that 
man as a physical being is the result of a long 
process of evolution, — the same process through 
which all the rest of the physical universe has been 
builded. The grandeur of God's creative act would 
not be obscured, but only enhanced, were we to- 
day to regard it not as having been exercised in 
a moment or by a single fiat, but as extending 
through ages of development, beginning with pri- 



9 6 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



mordial forces and monad forms, and ending with 
man as the crown and consummate flower of crea- 
tion. The theory of evolution is not yet proved. 
There are many scientific philosophers among the 
very greatest, like Professor Agassiz, who believe 
that it never can be established. But even if it 
should be established as the true account of man's 
origin as a physical being, it will not be in conflict 
with religious truth, or with the true meaning of 
this Divine Word. For man is more than a phys- 
ical being. No matter from what standpoint we 
regard him, we find in him what no physical phi- 
losophy can pretend to account for. In him we 
find certain characteristic faculties and powers 
which mark him as wholly distinct from all other 
creatures on this earth of ours ; and these charac- 
teristic faculties and powers are the differentia of 
man as an intellectual, moral, and spiritual being. 
In the great transaction of man's creation, then, 
whether it was evolutionary or instantaneous, there 
was an epoch-marking moment when a new factor 
appeared; when a new and supernal entity made 
its august appearance as a visitant from another 
world ; when a power from on high for the first 
time touched the organic and material, and took 
up its abode in this lower world, — and that was the 
supreme moment when God breathed the breath 
of life into man's nostrils, and he became a living 
soul. And when we study that soul we find that 
it bears the impress of its divine origin ; that it 
was fashioned not according to any earthly pat- 
tern, but after a pattern in the heavens. We read 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



97 



without wonder that it was not in the image of any 
brutish existence that man's soul was fashioned, 
but that it was fashioned in the image of God. 
And this was done not without deliberate counsel 
and purpose. We are struck, in reading this an- 
cient narrative, with the difference between this 
act and all that preceded it. All former things 
seem to have arisen, as it were, in accordance with 
some easy and natural plan, — the light, the firma- 
ment, the fishes, the cattle, the birds. But when 
it came to the creation of man, the council of the 
eternal Godhead was solemnly convoked. The 
sublime purpose of reproducing here on earth a 
being in the image of the invisible God was medi- 
tated and announced. After the pattern of God- 
head the soul's manhood was fashioned and made, 
and the great fact is here recorded. " So God 
created man in his own image ; in the image of 
God created he him." 

Therefore it is that the soul is the man ; in man's 
mental, moral, and spiritual nature his true man- 
hood lies. In this world man has a body, but he 
is a soul. And the soul is the real man. Un- 
doubtedly man's physical nature is useful and 
necessary here. With all its frailties it constitutes 
a splendid equipment for the human spirit. All 
creation moved by steady gradation upward to 
man as a physical being, and in him it reached its 
summit and consummation. It is one of the latest 
and most authoritative announcements of the evo- 
lutionary school of scientific thinkers, that man is 
not only the loftiest and noblest product of evolu- 

7 



9 8 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



tion, but that he is and shall be the last; that in 
him the principle of natural selection has given 
place to another law which has forever closed the 
ascending series of species, and that there can be, 
therefore, no nobler creation on this earth of ours 
than man. And when we consider man merely as 
a physical being, how matchless he is ! Erect and 
free, his very attitude is that of lordship. What a 
piece of work he is ! in form and moving how ex- 
press and admirable, — a front like Jove himself; 
an eye like Mars to threaten and command ! Who 
shall say or sing the marvels of the " human face 
divine"? who shall imitate the wonders of the hu- 
man hand? In all the boundless range of art its 
skill gives form to human thought and makes it 
glow on canvas or breathe in marble. It wields the 
flashing sword in battle, and soothes the fevered 
brow of pain ; it fells the giant oak, and by its clasp 
cements the bond of friendship ; it is the instru- 
ment of power, of love, and of blessing. And then 
the voice of man, — the organs of speech, the power 
to make articulate sounds and fashion them into 
words, those airy messengers which tell the secret 
thoughts of soul to soul, which make up that mar- 
vellous thing called language. And yet even these 
powers belong to the physical man only because 
he has a soul within him. They are simply the 
agents by means of which the soul expresses itself 
and holds communion with the outer world. 

Man's true nature, then, — that which constitutes 
his true manhood, — is mental, moral, spiritual; 
that which belongs to him in distinction from all 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



99 



other beings known to him here; which makes 
him what he is, — a man. As such he is able to 
apprehend the environment by which he is con- 
ditioned, and to look through it to a higher state 
of existence. As such he is able to will what is 
right and to choose what is good. As such he is 
able to love the ideal and so to rise toward it. In a 
word, his manhood is his personality, his individual- 
ity as an intellectual, moral, and spiritual being. 

It is a stupendous fact that every soul is unique 
in its inmost personality. Each differs from every 
other, stands in its own lot, bears its own burden, 
goes to its own place alone. The law of genera- 
tion, transmission, inheritance, largely shapes and 
determines man's physical nature; but the soul's 
individuality is original and underived. The reason 
is that every soul is a fresh creation. The body 
is begotten through generation : the soul of each 
child that is born comes direct from the creative 
power of God. I cannot take time now to discuss 
the question between Traducianists, who assert that 
the souls, like the bodies of all men, are derived 
through generation from Adam, and the Creation- 
ists, who assert that while the physical nature is so 
derived, each soul is a separate creation. Suffice 
it that the last view is the only view that is tenable. 
Beyond all question the new-created soul is condi- 
tioned by its environment. Enshrined in a body 
that inherits evil, the soul is conditioned by that 
evil; hence we have original sin, inherited ten- 
dency, transmitted bias, and other peculiarities of 
temperament and temper. But the fact remains 



100 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



that each soul, however conditioned by its body, is 
the result of a fresh creative act, and comes directly 
from the power and love of God. With Words- 
worth, therefore, we can say, — 

" Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting : 
The soul that rises with us, our life's star, 
Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
And cometh from afar. 
Not in entire forgetf illness, 
And not in utter nakedness, 
But trailing clouds of glory, do we come 
From God, who is our home." 

Therefore it is that in spite of all the associations 
that entangle him here, man is the master of his 
own destiny. No matter how squalid the environ- 
ment of his birth, nor how low and ignoble the lot 
to which he is born ; no matter how unknown or 
unworthy the name which he inherits, or what 
swarthy hues barbaric suns may have burned into 
the cheeks of his ancestors, the soul of every man 
is a new creation by God, and ought to be free and 
equal among his fellow-men. It is in this fact that 
I read the charter of human rights and human 
freedom. In this I discern the falseness of all class 
distinctions and other barriers that would separate 
man from man. In the kingdom of souls there are 
no inherited degrees of honor or shame. Each is 
free, and fully entitled to the place which he can 
honestly win and honorably hold. Therefore man 
is a responsible being. He comes into the world a 
sovereign soul, with power to determine the quality 
of his own life and action. And this responsibility 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



101 



he cannot abdicate any more than he can obliterate 
his own individuality. He cannot ease himself of 
it or share it with another. 

There is infinite pathos and pitifulness in the 
thought of man's lonely individuality, but there is 
grandeur too. In the solitude of its individuality 
each soul is a crowned and sceptred king. Day by 
day and hour by hour he must determine the awful 
issues of right and wrong, of life and death, as they 
arise, and no man and no angel can interpose be- 
tween him and his dread responsibility. In a deep 
and real sense he must think and choose and live 
out his life alone, even as he must go alone through 
the dark valley and shadow of death to that judg- 
ment which shall disclose what manner of man he 
has made himself to be in the sovereign freedom 
of his soul. 

In this sovereign individuality, then, man is en- 
dowed with those original powers which he must 
exercise, for the right exercise of which he is re- 
sponsible, and in the right exercise of which his true 
dignity lies, — the power to know, the power to will 
or choose, and the power to love. And first, of the 
power to know. It is a great truth that in man the 
world first became conscious of itself. No being 
lower than man is able to take cognizance of the 
world's meaning, to drink in its beauty, to appro- 
priate its good. Man only is able, through obser- 
vation and reflection, to understand the laws of 
nature and the sequence of history. He only can 
discern and appropriate creation's power and joy, 
— the mountain's grandeur, the landscape's beauty 



102 



THE DIGNITY OF MAX. 



the majesty of night, the glory of day. For him 
the aurora spreads its fitful light and the rainbow- 
lifts its lovely form ; for him the morning blushes 
in gladness over the eastern mountains; and the 
day departs with splendor through the portals of 
the western sky. For him the flowers bloom, and 
all the beautiful things of earth, — not for the beasts 
which see and heed them not, but for man, for the 
angels, and for God. Fast as his knowledge ex- 
pands his power grows. He makes the rivers and 
the seas his highways, the lightnings his messen- 
gers, the winds and the currents and all Nature's 
forces his servants, because he alone has the power 
to understand and therefore to use them. Not 
only so, but from them he is able to reason to 
higher things, — to look into the mirror of his own 
soul, to read the majestic secrets that are reflected 
there; and so, being conscious of the world and of 
himself, to become conscious of God. 'T is the 
power to know, which is the signature of divinity 
in the soul of man. The quest for knowledge is a 
divine quest, the soul that engages in it is exer- 
cising one of the royal prerogatives of its nature, 
and all true seekers after truth are seekers after 
God. 

Next, man has the power to will, to choose freely 
between good and evil. Perhaps of all his powers 
this is the most characteristic of him as a man, for 
the brute has no such power. The brute is under 
the absolute control of instinct. When an object 
of fear or desire is placed before a brute, it in- 
stinctively seizes it or flies from it; but man has 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



IO3 



a peculiar power of determining his own actions 
for himself, and of choosing freely between right 
and wrong. Passion may say it is desirable or un- 
desirable, appetite may say it is fair or repulsive, 
but conscience whispers it is right or wrong, and 
man has power to heed conscience in defiance of 
passion and appetite ; to say, " I '11 do right at 
whatever cost; " to say, " I '11 do this thing, not be- 
cause of fear or desire, but because it is right, and 
I '11 refuse to do that thing because it is wrong." 
The power to do this belongs of right to every 
soul. No squalid surroundings at birth have ever 
been able to banish it, no inherited languor or taint 
in the blood has ever been able to steal it away. 
The man himself may sin it away; but until it is 
forfeited by his own mad act it belongs to every 
soul. And this it is which makes the soul of man 
so great; which makes man greater than all the 
universe besides, for all things else are in bond- 
age to necessary law. The wandering comet is 
held in the firm leash of law, as is also the wild 
hurricane that sweeps across continents and careers 
over foaming seas. The iron hand of necessity 
hurls the cataract and paints the lily and shakes 
the aspen in the breeze. In all the world there is 
only one thing that is free, and that is the soul of 
man. No external force or power, no inherited ten- 
dency or bias, can coerce his thought, his choice, 
his affection. Made in God's image, he alone can 
wield this sovereign, this godlike power, and act 
not from instinct, or caprice, or impulse, or pas- 
sion, or any kind of necessity, but freely do the 



104 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



right because it is right. This is the characteristic 
power and glory of a man. 

Finally, another characteristic of the human soul 
is the power to love the ideal; this too is part of 
the equipment of a sovereign nature. Not passion, 
or desire, or longing, or any sickly sentimentalism, 
but the outgoing of man's affection from himself 
toward an ideal beauty or grace, in a generous, 
noble, unselfish desire to honor and bless that 
ideal, — this is human love. It is the inspiration 
of all noble endeavor, the principle of all aspira- 
tion, the spirit of all worship. This power, strong- 
est in the strong, noblest in the noble, has been the 
secret of all real advancement among men, — the 
power to love and so to approach the ideal beauty, 
goodness, grace ; in a word, the power to love God. 
Time fails me to speak of it to-day as I would. 
Let it suffice now to say that this is pre-eminently 
man's spiritual faculty. Blindly, fitfully, it often 
gropes and even grovels here, wasting its wealth 
of tenderness often on objects most unworthy; but 
its highest earthly exercise is Christian worship, 
its loftiest fruition will be the beatific vision when 
man shall see the King in His beauty, and behold 
the land that is very far off. 

Can you not now divine for yourselves the 
great lesson to which our thought has conducted 
us? Man's true dignity lies in the right use of 
these noble faculties which constitute the equip- 
ment of his nature. I know indeed that this re- 
gal nature of his is fallen. On Sunday next I am 
to speak of the indignity wrought upon man and 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



IO5 



within him by sin. But even in his fallen state, 
all man's grandeur lies in what he is and may 
become. And if to the idea of dignity we add 
the idea of worth, then he who has most nobly 
used these regal faculties of his soul is the man 
of most dignity and most worth. And the noblest 
use of these faculties is that which directs them to 
what is above man, not to what is beneath him; 
to what pertains to his soul's everlasting interest, 
and not the perishable interests of time and sense. 
To know the Truth, to choose the Right, to love 
the Infinite Good, — this is man's true vocation. 
I know that there are interests that belong to 
man's earthly estate. It is part of his high call- 
ing to subdue the world and exercise dominion 
over it, and this he can do only by the labor of 
business, the travail of thought, the toil of enter- 
prise and discovery. The man who fails to do his 
share toward the attainment or the rectification 
of this dominion, having no adequate disability to 
excuse him, is a laggard or a coward in life's battle. 
But let not the man who succeeds in winning the 
world make the fatal mistake of supposing that 
this is all. Not earth only, but heaven also, is to 
be won. And in the winning of earthly success 
the sole value of all his enterprise and toil to his 
undying soul is not what he gets to have, but what 
he gets to be. The supreme question is, With all 
my gain am I gaining wisdom, and with all my 
getting am I getting understanding? " For the 
merchandise of it is better than the merchandise 
of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold." 



io6 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



And oh, if men could only understand this, how 
much easier would it be to bear what men call 
earthly misfortune or earthly failure ! How evi- 
dent it is that these when honestly encountered 
and bravely borne are the choicest conditions for 
winning the true success of the soul, the true 
grace of manhood, which is likeness to God ! 

In a vision once I seemed to know a proud 
people who dwelt in a goodly land. Bright skies 
bent above it, summer seas breathed upon it, and 
careless plenty abounded in the homes of " fair 
women and brave men." And I seemed to see 
a cloud of war arise and hang like a meteor upon 
the declivities of the mountains. Then the storm 
broke and surged over that fair land. Not a home 
but was bereaved, not a woman in all its congrega- 
tions but was draped in mourning. Desolation 
stalked through all its borders. And then after 
years of untold anguish came utter defeat, utter 
failure, utter poverty, utter ruin. The years passed 
on, — years of such humiliation and suffering as 
we in our waking moments can hardly understand. 
And then the fruits, the peaceable fruits of those 
years of grievous chastening seemed to appear, — 
such grace and tenderness and sweet humility, 
such piety in young and old, as never existed in 
the old days of that people's prosperity, and such 
as shall, if not lost through sin and folly, make the 
homes of that people a praise through all the 
earth. Which vision I take to be an allegory 
wherein to read the great lesson that it is not in 
what he has, nor in what he boasts, but in what he 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



107 



is, that man's true worth is to be found ; and even 
misfortune and disaster and failure are transformed 
into blessing and success, if through them the soul 
is humbled and strengthened and more conformed 
to the likeness of God. Surely it is hard enough 
to compass this in the midst of earthly chastening; 
but to grow more and more unworldly in the midst 
of worldly prosperity, — hie labor, hoc opus est. 
But whether in wealth or adversity, God's grace 
is freely offered to us, redeeming Love has opened 
the way for us, atoning mercy stretches down a 
Saviour's hand to help us, 

Nay, the Spirit of God is now freely offered to 
help our infirmities, to restore the Divine image 
in our souls, to guide us into all truth, to enable 
us to choose the right, to love the good, and so to 
rise to a likeness to God. 



SERMON III. 



THE INDIGNITY OF SIN. 1 

But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul : all they 
that hate me love death. — Prov. viii. 36. 

TN one of the most remarkable passages in epic 
literature the poet Milton describes the meet- 
ing, of Satan, Sin, and Death at the gate of hell. 
Of Sin and Death he says : — 

" Before the gates there sat 
On either side a formidable shape : 
The one seemed woman to the waist, and fair ; 
But ended foul in many a scaly fold 
Voluminous and vast ; a serpent armed 
With mortal sting : About her middle round 
A cry of hell-hounds never ceasing barked 
With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung 
A hideous peal ; . . . 

The other shape, 
If shape it might be called that shape had none 
Distinguishable in member, joint or limb; 
Or substance might be called that shadow seemed, 
For each seemed either ; black it stood as night, 
Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell, 
And shook a dreadful dart ; what seemed his head 
The likeness of a kingly crown had on." 

Then follows, in Milton's great epic, a descrip- 
tion of the meeting between the arch-fiend and 

1 Preached in St. Paul's Church, Detroit, on the morning of the 
second Sunday in Advent, 1884. 



THE INDIGNITY OF SIN 



109 



these horrible shapes, of the imminent conflict, the 
sudden recognition, the final reconciliation, and 
then of the opening of the gates of hell by the keys 
of death, and of the sallying forth of these malig- 
nant powers to vex and destroy the human race. 
And when we look upon the course of human his- 
tory we seem to see a direful confirmation of the 
poet's story. As if in very deed sin and death 
had issued forth from hell's yawning portals, and 
had indeed come hither to work their woful will, 
we seem to see in all man's manifold wretchedness 
the evidence of a fiendish power too subtle and 
too malignant to be of earth. For thrice two thou- 
sand years these loathsome shapes have seemed to 
walk this earth of ours, the one sowing, the other 
reaping, while all creation has groaned and trav- 
ailed, as if smitten with a curse. 

We need not invoke the aid, however, of the 
poet's gloomy fancy to deepen our sense of the 
awfulness of human misery. The most appalling 
fact with which human experience has to deal is 
the existence of evil. Fair as is the world in 
which we live, this is the shadow that haunts all 
its visions of splendor. Joyous as each generation 
is as it sets out in the glee of childhood and the 
gladness of youth, this is the woe that dogs its 
footsteps and saddens all its mirth. In Nature 
itself, as if in secret sympathy with man, there 
seems to be, in the falling leaves and the sobbing 
winds of autumn, and in the moan of the waves 
as they break on solitary shores, the bodeful sense 
of evil. And that evil seems to confront and 



no 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



threaten us with dark and unearthly malignity, in 
the coil of the serpent, the roar of the beast, and 
the strident shriek of the storm. And when we 
turn from Nature to the haunts of men, we en- 
counter the same sense of the presence and ma- 
lignity of evil. Society itself may be said to live 
in an embattled camp, guarded by sentinels who 
perpetually stand to their arms. Courts, jails, and 
prisons, policemen, bailiffs, and other myrmidons 
of the law, the locks upon the doors of our houses, 
the lights that burn by night in our streets, are all 
witnesses of the felt presence of evil against which 
it behooves men to guard themselves and those 
whom they love. Not only so, but these tell not 
half the story. There is a deeper, darker, deadlier 
evil than courts and magistrates can deal with and 
punish. Far down in the depths of man's being 
is the fell disorder of which all guilty acts are but 
the symptoms and outward manifestations; and 
that dread disorder is sin. What a terrible thing 
it is ! How boundless, how unutterable the ill that 
it has wrought ! Not a home in all the world that 
has not been darkened by it; not a family that has 
not been bereaved ; not a life that has not been 
burdened and saddened by it. All the groans 
that agonizing humanity has uttered ; all the sighs 
that have been sobbed out of aching hearts; all 
the tears that men, women, and children have 
shed; all real sorrow, all real woe, have sprung 
from that terrible thing called Sin, the mother of 
Death. 

I do not intend this morning to inquire into the 



THE INDIGNITY OF SIN 



dark question of the origin of evil. As you know, 
it is around this problem that the most subtle, the 
most eager, and the most bootless of all theological 
controversies have raged. It is not necessary to 
our present purpose that we should renew or re- 
view the wordy strife. It will be enough for us to 
begin with the postulate, that the possibility of sin 
was involved in man's freedom as a moral being, 
and that the actuality of sin resulted from the 
abuse of that freedom. In his sovereign counsel 
God decreed that man should be made in his own 
image, and should therefore be a moral being. But 
he could not be a moral being unless he should 
be free; he could not be free without liberty of 
choice; he could not have liberty of choice un- 
less the better and the worse should be present 
to him; and in choosing between them he chose 
the worse instead of the better, and the result was 
sin and death. Through man's freedom, then, sin 
came into the world, and death by sin. This 
much suffices for us to know. There remains the 
question, however, What is sin ; and how is it 
related to the soul and its life? 

For our present purpose it will not be sufficient 
to say with Saint John that sin is the transgression 
of the law, or that all unrighteousness is sin ; nor 
with Saint Paul that sin is the negation of faith, so 
that whatsoever is not of faith is sin. Profoundly 
true as these answers are, yet a little reflection is 
necessary to enable us to appropriate their truth. 
We must first recur, then, to the thought of what 
man is, and of what his relation was intended to 



I 12 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



be to the world and time, to eternity and God. 
We have seen, then, that man is essentially and 
characteristically a spiritual being; that it is his 
intellectual, moral, and spiritual nature that dis- 
tinguishes him from all other creatures known 
to him here, and that this it is which makes him 
what he is, — a man. Man, then, is a soul, and 
the soul is the real man. In this state of exist- 
ence, however, man has a body; and body and 
soul are so intimately united that they constitute 
the living person. Through his physical nature, 
then, man is related to the world and time, just as 
through his spiritual nature he is related to eter- 
nity and God. But in this complex being, man's 
physical nature was intended to be in all things 
obedient and subordinate, the instrument and ser- 
vant of his nobler part; because his spiritual na- 
ture is his true nature, and his physical nature is 
common to him with the brutes that perish. By 
the faculties of his nobler nature, moreover, man 
exercises all the nobler functions of his being, 
taking cognizance of the meaning of the world and 
of time, of ideas, of thoughts, of beauty, of good- 
ness, of God. But the faculties of man's physical 
nature deal only with the phenomena of time and 
sense, revealing to him only what the very brutes 
can see and feel and love. Now, it was man's 
temptation, that while the higher world was acces- 
sible to him through these powers of his nobler 
nature, the lower world was making its insidious 
appeal to him through sense; and his fall con- 
sisted in his yielding to this enchantment, and so 



THE INDIGNITY OF SIN 



113 



giving his soul's allegiance to the objects of sense. 
The choice came before him so that to choose the 
lower was to reject the higher; to follow appetite 
was to forsake duty; to believe the tempter was 
to deny God. He made the fatal choice. The 
moment he did so, the harmony of his nature was 
broken up, and his life swung from its true centre. 
The part of his nature that was intended to be 
servant became master. The world that was in- 
tended to obey him became his lord. Time, that 
was intended to be but the season of his tutelage, 
seemed to span and include his whole existence ; 
and all the glad sense of immortality and of God 
was extinguished by guilty fear and earthliness. 
In a word, man began to become flesh, and all his 
higher nature to be foully dishonored. The law 
of life which had reigned in his soul became sub- 
ordinate to the law of death which reigned in his 
mortal members; and the confusion, the shame, 
the dishonor which then began in the soul is the 
awful condition of heart and life which we call sin. 
Now, then, there are various definitions of sin, each 
one of which is true according to our standpoint. 
If we regard sin as a violation of man's true des- 
tiny, which destiny we read not only in God's lov- 
ing command, but also in the very law of man's 
own being, then sin is the transgressing of the law. 
If we regard sin as variation from the right, the 
good, the true, then sin is unrighteousness. If we 
regard sin as the negation of man's true nature as 
a spiritual being, and the identifying of him with 
the things of sense, then sin is materialism. If we 

8 



114 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 



regard sin as the fixing of the affections — affec- 
tions that were intended for glories beyond the 
stars — upon the perishing things of this world, 
then sin is worldliness. And finally, if we regard 
sin as the failure or refusal of the soul to ap- 
prehend and confide in the unseen, then sin is 
unbelief. In the sphere of law, then, sin is 
transgression ; in the sphere of morals, it is un- 
righteousness ; in the sphere of thought, it is 
materialism ; in the sphere of conduct, it is world- 
liness ; in the sphere of spiritual apprehension, it 
is unbelief. But it is always the one and self- 
same thing, the same grim and ghastly thing, — in 
the godless man of the world, and the ruffian who 
outrages law, and the smooth libertine and vulgar 
thief ; in the respectable atheist who says there is 
no God, and the brave outlaw who lives his creed 
and acts upon his belief. For we must remember 
that while sins differ, sin, the evil root out of which 
all sins proceed, is the same. Sins are but symp- 
toms : the disease called sin lies deeper in the soul. 
You may hide or even suppress the symptoms, 
and yet the sin may be as deadly and ghastly as 
ever. For instance, the sinner may not steal, but 
he may covet; he may not murder, but he may 
hate; and in all such cases, though there be no 
outward act, the sin may be the same in the heart. 
And oh, it is an awful thought, well calculated to 
humble us all into the very dust, that no matter 
what our sins may be, — no matter how decent, 
how respectable, how secret, — they each and all 
proceed out of the same fell disorder as the sins 



THE INDIGNITY OF SIN. 



115 



of the veriest wretch who outrages man's laws and 
exhausts man's patience by his wickedness ! In 
all cases the sin at bottom is the same, whether 
it be called transgression, unrighteousness, material- 
ism, worldliness, or unbelief. 

And now that sin has been traced to its last 
analysis, let us consider its results on the soul. It 
was Wisdom that of old spoke the words of my 
text, and her voice is still uplifted among the sons 
of men : " He that sinneth against me wrongeth 
his own soul." It is true that he wrongs the souls 
of others also. No man ever sins but he inflicts a 
grievous wrong upon some other soul ; it may be 
upon many. It may be an everlasting woe upon 
multitudes of souls, both here and hereafter. Oh, 
if we could only understand that awful truth, — the 
persistency of evil! The evil word, the unfeeling 
jest, the cold and brutal sneer, the wicked example, 
once done or said, go forth dealing death, — may 
go down the ages dealing woe upon thousands of 
souls long after the wicked or heedless heart that 
did the wrong lies mouldering in the grave. But 
it is not of this that I now speak. The worst 
wrong, the deepest indignity, is done to the soul 
that commits the sin. " He that sinneth against 
me wrongeth his own soul." 

And first, he wrongs his soul by the degradation 
he inflicts upon it, the evil that he scatters through 
it. The soul comes as a new creation from God. 
It is enshrined in a body that inherits evil, — evil 
propensities, insurgent affections; and it has a 
hard struggle at best, and cannot win the victory 



n6 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN". 



but by the help of God. But the man who sins 
makes a voluntary surrender of the nobler to the 
baser part, and so appropriates the frailty of the 
baser nature, and makes it a part of his soul's 
being. Each sin by a certain reflex action spreads 
disorder through man's whole nature. In this way 
the very bodily appetite may become the appetite 
also of the soul. Oh, grim and ghastly are the 
evils which sin inflicts upon the body ! It dulls the 
eye, and palsies the hand, and banishes manly grace 
from the brow, and coarsens and brutalizes the 
human face divine. Disease, decrepitude, frailty, 
are among the dread indignities that sin often 
works upon the body. But something far more 
dreadful than this befalls the sinner. The soul 
takes on the vice of the body. The worst symp- 
tom of drunkenness, for instance, is not the crav- 
ing of the body, but the craving of the soul. The 
soul of the inebriate begins to crave the false ex- 
citement of drink, and an obliquity corresponding 
to that of the body begins to be set up in the soul. 
The eye of the drunkard sees false or sees double: 
the mind's eye begins to see false also. And so 
it comes to pass that the soul of the drunkard be- 
comes untruthful. It is now well known that men 
who habitually get drunk will lie. This is the rea- 
son that men cannot trust the word of a drunk- 
ard. So also the deadly sin of impurity. The 
very mind and conscience become defiled. The 
mind becomes pander to the body. Oh, horrible 
degradation! And so we find that there is a 
correspondence and correlation between different 



THE INDIGNITY OF SIN 



II/ 



kinds of sin. The sensual man is always a cruel 
man. The drunkard is a liar. The thief is simply 
covetous and selfish, just like the worldling and 
the miser. In all these things man's whole nature 
is shamed and dishonored. In all his being he is 
degraded and coarsened by his sin. 

And this becomes all the more evident when we 
examine the wrong which sin does to man's char- 
acteristic powers. And first, his intellectual facul- 
ties, his reason, his power to know. It is a great 
and awful truth, little heeded, little understood, 
that all the powers of man's intellect are blunted 
and weakened by sin. That this should be so lies 
in the very nature of things. Man's regal mind 
cannot be overpowered by appetite or passion 
without grievous debasement and deterioration. 
"Who has not seen the splendor of some lordly 
intellect first dimmed, then obscured, by excess or 
folly, until its fitful light would blaze out only at 
intervals, and then go out in piteous darkness, or 
fade into still more pitiable imbecility? But even 
more pitiable, if possible, is it to see the royal in- 
tellect of man forced into the base service of the 
world, and compelled to drudge like a very slave 
in the interest of sordid vice, or avarice, or other 
selfishness. Who does not know how such intel- 
lect declines into trickery or beastly cunning, as it 
watches like a fox for a chance to deceive, or like 
a predatory beast to seize its prey? To such a 
man high thoughts and noble purposes become 
simply impossible. While others do the noble 
deeds and carry out the beneficent plans of life, 



n8 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



he is intent simply on selfish gratifications ; is 
pampering his little pride, or seeking his little 
pleasure, or heaping together his sordid gains, and 
so growing more and more insensible to the call 
of honor and reason, more and more base, and 
more and more contemptible. 

Not less disastrous, not less dishonoring, is the 
influence of sin on man's moral nature, — on his 
power to discriminate and choose between right 
and wrong. Of the debilitating effect of sin upon 
the will of man I need not speak at length. All 
observation and all experience prove that this 
is its immediate, unvarying, inevitable effect. He 
who once yields to do wrong will find it harder 
the next time to do right, until he speedily be- 
comes powerless to choose good and resist evil. 
But of the darkening, paralyzing effect of sin upon 
a moral sense not so much is commonly thought, 
though such effect is not less immediate and in- 
evitable. The moral sense, which at first is quick 
to discriminate, begins, under the pressure of sin, to 
lose the keenness of perception. The high sense 
of honor and of truthfulness is dulled. The good 
seems to be less good, and the evil does not seem 
to be so very evil, until at last that soul calls evil 
good, and good evil. Woe to the soul that is in 
such a case ! Woe to him that puts darkness for 
light and light for darkness ! He has abdicated 
his throne, and lost his regal state, and broken his 
sceptre, and flung away his crown. Such a des- 
perate degradation is not reached all at once, — not 
till years of sin, it may be, and of indulgence have 



THE INDIGNITY OF SIN 



119 



passed by. But let the soul remember that the 
first sin is the first step, and that the next will be 
easier, and that with each succeeding sin the mo- 
mentum increases at a fearful rate until its speed 
shall hurl it down to ruin. 

Finally, even more debasing is the effect of sin 
upon the affections. This would seem to be the 
worst degradation of all, — that man should not 
only sin his intellect and will and conscience away, 
but that he should love his shame, that his soul 
should be enamoured of its degradation. And yet, 
who does not know that even this is the effect 
of sin? Through it men learn to love the base 
things of this world, and lose the power to love 
the nobler things. What is life to such a soul but 
shame? What shall death be but the beginning 
of an eternal bereavement? All its affections are 
fixed on things of sense. All its delights and all 
its joys are bound up with the pleasures of sense. 
And when death comes and strips off the pam- 
pered flesh, and the world, which alone it is able 
to love, fades away like the baseless fabric of a 
vision, what shall eternity be to that soul but an 
eternal bereavement of all that it is able to love, 
and therefore an eternal torture and an eternal 
death? 

One word in conclusion. All the effects of sin 
upon the soul may be summed up in one dreadful 
word, and that is Death. There is indeed a phan- 
tom called by that name, and he too is an object 
of terror. To him one of our own poets has said 
in solemn invocation, — 



120 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



" Come to the bridal chamber, Death ; 
Come to the mother, when she feels, 
For the first time, her firstborn's breath ; 
Come when the blessed seals 
That close the pestilence are broke, 
And crowded cities wail its stroke ; 
Come in consumption's ghastly form, 
The earthquake-shock, the ocean's storm; 
Come when the heart beats high and warm, 
With banquet song, and dance, and wine ; 
And thou art terrible, — the tear, 
The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier ; 
And all we know, or dream, or fear 
Of agony, are thine." 

But it is not of this phantom king that I now 
speak. Compared with the real death, this may 
be and often is a delivering angel, whether he 
comes in the evening, or at midnight, or at cock- 
crowing, or in the morning, — an angel of deliver- 
ance to those who, when he cometh, are found 
watching. But the death of which I speak is the 
dying of the soul, the decay of its faculties, the 
wasting of its powers, the languishing of its 
strength, — the progressive, unending dying of an 
immortal soul, with all its unending anguish of un- 
satisfied longing, unfulfilled desire, baffled hope, 
pitiless remorse, remediless despair. This is the 
dread reality at which men ought to tremble. It 
is no chimera of imagination ; it is no spectre of 
the future, — it is a present reality. It is doing 
its ghastly work even now in every soul where 
sin reigns. For the soul that sins is dying. The 
wages of sin is death. 



THE INDIGNITY OF SIN. 121 

How sweet, then, is the sound of the gospel to 
us sinners ! How precious is this word of life 
which tells us that a fountain is opened in the house 
of David for sin and uncleanness ; that there is 
One who is called Jesus, because He saves His 
people from their sins; " that if any man sin, we 
have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ 
the righteous : and he is the Propitiation for our 
sins " ! 



SERMON IV. 



REDEMPTION. 

And thou shalt call his name Jesus : for he shall save his 
people from their sins. — St. Matt. i. 21. 

THE signification of the name of the great Re- 
deemer, whose human birth we are soon to 
commemorate, is here very accurately given : and 
we naturally look to this definition for its deepest 
import and profoundest meaning; for it was thus 
defined before his birth by an angelic messenger 
from another w T orld. The name itself was not un- 
common among the Jews. Under its Hebrew form 
of Joshua it had been famous in the annals of 
priestly and patriotic renown; and in its etymo- 
logical signification of " Saviour," or " help from 
God," the oppressed sons of Jacob had more than 
once seemed to hear the note of Israel's deliver- 
ance. And as Joshua the son of Nun had been 
the great standard-bearer of God's people, and in 
his name had smitten the heathen hip and thigh, 
so again and again did Israel's fond mothers give 
this name to their sons in the hope that each son 
so honored would be the deliverer of his race. 
But when the true deliverer came, though the 

1 Preached in St. Paul's Church, Detroit, on the morning of 
the third Sunday in Advent, 18S4. 



REDEMPTION. 



123 



same old name of hope and power was given to 
him, it was given with a new signification. He 
was to be his people's Saviour indeed, but it was 
to be from no mere external evil or external bond- 
age. His great work was to be far more intensive, 
far more inclusive, far more comprehensive. He 
was to save them from that which is the secret and 
source of all real evil and all real bondage: from 
the deadly disease that was feeding at humanity's 
heart and preying on its life ; from the ghastly 
brood of ills which that disorder, with woful fe- 
cundity, was daily and hourly bringing forth to 
deal destruction throughout the world, — He w^as 
" to save his people from their sins." 

If my time permitted me to take a historical 
view of my subject, I might well speak of the des- 
perate need which was dimly felt for some Saviour 
and Restorer in the age when Jesus was born. The 
whole world was lying in inconceivable wickedness 
and wretchedness. Political servitude and servile 
bondage, enforced by remorseless Roman legion- 
aries against the brilliant but despairing efforts of 
such patriots as Ariovistus and the Maccabees, 
were amonq; the very least of their evils. The 
expiring forces of paganism had left the Gen- 
tile world without hope and without any worthy 
ideals. Under the degenerating influence of sin 
and worldliness all the barriers that had guarded 
society had broken down. By the secret and 
open assaults of guilty passion the institution of 
the family had been overthrown. Marriage, which 
God by an eternal law had declared to be indis- 



124 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



soluble except by death, was made a mere abstract 
of convenience ; and divorce, that Nemesis of lib- 
ertinism, began to desolate the homes of men. 
Fatherhood was no longer a source of pride ; ma- 
ternity was avoided or prevented as an evil. Pa- 
rents no longer loved their children, and children 
no longer honored their parents. The heartless 
cruelty of the Roman matron who drove her char- 
iot wheels over her father's dead body was only 
a symptom of the utter debasement into w T hich 
society had fallen. Now, in the midst of it all, 
the weariness of hopelessness and despair had 
settled down like a pall upon the world. Men, 
women, and children madly flung the gift of life 
away. It was easier to find men for the bloody 
games of the amphitheatre than it was to get beasts 
to fight with them ; and so in mere wantonness 
they hurled themselves against each other's spears, 
amid the frenzied shouts of a light-minded mob, 
who, lacking all else that they could delight in, 
gloated over the brutal spectacle of the arena ; or, 
lacking all else that they could do homage to, 
lifted up their voices in loud acclaim to salute the 
monster who happened at the time to wear the im- 
perial purple; and who, in the historian's dread- 
ful phrase, was " at once a priest, an atheist, and 
a god." Words would fail, however, as time fails, 
to tell the woe which, after four thousand years of 
guilt and wrong, had settled down upon the lives 
of men, w r hen in a vision of the night the unearthly 
voice of an angel told to a perplexed dreamer in 
Galilee the coming of the world's Saviour; but it 



REDEMPTION. 



125 



was in a character not looked for, not expected, 
not desired: He came to save His people from 
their sins. 

It is not necessary, however, to recur to the 
state of the world at the time of Christ's coming, 
to understand man's need of deliverance. Sin is 
an ever-present evil. We have but to study the 
human heart as it is, to see how great its need, 
how dire its extremity. We have already learned 
what sin is, — the fell disorder which scatters evil 
through man's whole nature, whose work is de- 
crepitude and misery, whose wages is death. 
From this state no human agency can deliver 
man ; no power can rescue him but a power from 
above, which comes from beyond the reach of 
sin's deadly action; for all human powers and 
faculties are disabled and degenerated under the 
influence of the universal curse which his sin has 
inflicted on the race. Let us think for a moment 
now of the powerlessness and hopelessness of man 
under the dominion of sin. Laying aside all tech- 
nical language, let us consider how helpless he is 
to escape by any agency of his own from the 
power of evil. 

And first, there is a common delusion that sin 
is like some diseases that are said to run their 
course and then cease ; that is, if sin be left alone 
it will exhaust itself, and leave the soul but little 
if any the worse. How common this notion is I 
need not say. In all ages this has been the delu- 
sion of youth, and it often deepens and darkens 
with advancing years. Who that has been rescued 



126 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



from the glamour of the world does not shudder 
at the complacency with which the young go forth 
"to sow their wild oats/' as the phrase is; at the 
confidence with which they leave the father's roof 
and a mother's care, to go and mingle with the 
world and learn its ways and its so-called wisdom? 
Yes; to see the prodigal go forth is a heart- 
breaking sight to those who know of his peril. 
Sometimes, indeed, he returns, through God's 
mercy, but never the same. The substance — 
the soul's substance — is sure to be wasted, the 
gladness departed, the joy gone. But often the 
prodigal never returns at all, but abides in some 
far country, and sinks into deeper and deeper 
degradation. And so he confirms the old, old 
truth, that " whatsoever a man soweth that shall 
he also reap;" that "he that soweth to the flesh 
shall of the flesh reap corruption." For oh, one 
of the worst things about sin is its persistency ! 
In the world around us, as is well known, there is 
a law called the law of degeneration. When by 
dint of culture and care some species of animals 
or plants are domesticated and improved, if they 
then be released from care and abandoned to their 
own instincts, they degenerate or revert to the 
lower type from which they sprung. Thus the 
trained courser, when turned out, soon becomes 
the common and shaggy wild horse of the plains ; 
the tumbler pigeon, the winged and crested pig- 
eon of glorious plumage, the carrier dove, degen- 
erate into the wild pigeon of the forest; and the 
most beautiful roses, when abandoned in a deso- 



REDEMPTION. 



127 



late and weed-grown garden, become like the wild 
roses that blossom in the woods. So throughout 
all Nature we find a common law of degenera- 
tion. But far worse is the degeneration that sin 
works in the soul. All the baser passions and 
powers grow stronger and stronger by use, and all 
the nobler faculties and powers grow weaker and 
w r eaker by disuse, until these last are exterminated 
or disabled, and the man has become mere flesh. 
Therefore it is that the more sin is indulged, the 
more hopeless, the more remediless, humanly 
speaking, it becomes. It has no reactionary, re- 
silient force. Of itself it cannot stop short of 
death. It may and often does change its form as 
years roll on. The frivolous, undutiful, pleasure- 
loving sin of youth often changes into some other 
form of selfishness, such as avarice, or sensuality, 
or drunkenness. The thoughtless, lawless, selfish 
boy may become the grasping or cruel or sensual 
man; may become by. means of his own selfish- 
ness what the world calls prudent and prosperous; 
but in this his sin has not in the least diminished 
or run its course ; it has only deepened and taken 
on a deadlier form, — deadlier because it is now 
intrenched behind a cold and inaccessible barrier 
of selfish thrift and heartless prosperity. 

And if sin has no healing power in itself, no 
more can penalty save and deliver from it, — neither 
the suffering of present penalty nor the threaten- 
ing of future punishment. Sin has its present 
penalty. With all its early glamour, and with all 
its later delusion and observation, every soul that 



128 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



sins suffers penalty and loss. From the moment 
that the fell enchantment of the world works its 
spell upon the soul, it is deluded and deceived, — 
never rewarded, never appeased, never satisfied. 
And not only is there discontent and restlessness, 
unsatisfied longing, consuming desire, the sense 
of dishonor and failure within the soul, but there 
is often the external penalty that waits upon trans- 
gression. But in none of these is there any 
remedial power. In all the round of human 
wretchedness there is no sadder spectacle than 
to see the soul sorrow and agonize and sicken 
under the penalty of sin, and at the same time 
grow harder and more desperate in its sin. And 
yet it is a common sight. There is a difference, 
not in degree, but in kind, between the godly 
sorrow that leadeth to repentance not to be re- 
pented of, and the sorrow of the world that 
worketh death. And this is the profound lesson 
that it teaches, — that punishment alone cannot 
reform ; that penalty alone has no power to heal 
the sickness of the soul. Statesmanship is at last 
beginning to take note of this disheartening truth. 
If penalty is the only force that is brought to bear 
upon the criminal, as it too often is, then his last 
state is sure to be worse than the first. It is now 
well known that discharged convicts are as a rule 
our worst criminals. It is by no means uncom- 
mon for the thief or burglar who has served out 
his sentence, to hasten from the very prison doors 
to the commission of another and a worse crime. 
Therefore there are thoughtful men in whose esti- 



REDEMPTION 



129 



mation our prison system as a remedial system 
is a total failure ; and who believe that as things 
are, our jails and prisons are but seminaries of 
crime from which a great and growing criminal 
class is being constantly officered and recruited. 
Nay, there are those who believe that for a capi- 
tal offence it is better and more merciful to hang 
a man than to send him to prison ; for if he go to 
prison he is almost sure to get worse instead of 
better, but if he be hanged he may at any rate 
save his soul. I do not intend, however, to discuss 
this subject now. Enough has been said to sug- 
gest what is confirmed by all observation and ex- 
perience, — that punishment alone has no power 
to reform ; that penalty cannot save from sin and 
death. 

So as we pass in review all the plans and methods 
of human reform, we find that there is nothing that 
man of himself can do in which he can find deliver- 
ance from his evil state. And when we add to this 
state of helplessness the sense of guilty desert which 
every sinner feels in his heart with reference to a 
pure and holy God, which drives him away from 
Gcd, and which necessarily separates him from 
God, we see how hopeless his natural condition 
is. And man's despairing efforts have only con- 
firmed this ; in all ages, in every clime, beneath 
every sky, he has sought deliverance from his 
evil case. Beside lurid altar fires, in the smoke 
of sacrifice, in the depths of forest, in mountain 
caves, on hoary heights, beneath academic groves, 
by meditation, by self-inflicted torture, in philoso- 

9 



130 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



phy, in religious nescience, in fanaticism, in idol- 
atry, in all the movements and progress and de- 
cay of human thought and human effort, man has 
sought, and has sought in vain for some remedy 
for the grievous hurt of his soul; for some healer 
and deliverer from his deadly evil. Many pre- 
tenders indeed have appeared, but none have even 
guessed the true secret of the disorder. Some 
have proposed external and legislative remedies ; 
some have offered military force or socialistic 
organization ; some have pointed men to the 
secret chamber of philosophy or to the desert 
of asceticism. But all have failed, utterly, drearily, 
disastrously. One there was, however, who came 
in different guise and with far profounder pur- 
pose ; who came to heal men and so restore the 
soul from its dread disorder; and that was He 
whose name was first breathed by the angel of 
the annunciation, and was first defined in all the 
fulness of its meaning by the angel of Joseph's 
dream: "Thou shalt call his name Jesus; for he 
shall save his people from their sins." 

What man, therefore, was unable to do for him- 
self, the pitiful, merciful God undertook to do for 
him, and in a manner the most effective, the most 
wonderful. In the fulness of time He Himself 
came forth, in the person of the Son, " made of a 
woman, made under the law, . . . that we might 
receive the adoption of sons." It is a pious opin- 
ion entertained by many divines and sages that 
the incarnation would have taken place even if 
man had not sinned and fallen; that it was part of 



REDEMPTION. 



131 



the Divine purpose toward men that at the proper 
time the great archetype according to which man 
had been fashioned at creation should be revealed 
in the Incarnate Word, as the standard and meas- 
ure of what man made in God's image ought to 
become. Be this as it may, it was not till man's 
sin and fall that the hope of deliverance was given 
in the beautiful promise that Eve, the sorrowing 
mother of transgression, should also be the mother 
of salvation. Poor, penitent Eve ! deep down in 
her sorrowing womanly heart the blessed hope was 
planted, and when her firstborn son came into the 
world, she fondly thought he might be the deliv- 
erer; and so she said, "I've gotten a man from 
the Lord." What heartbreak came to her, how 
did the iron enter into her mother-heart, when 
that son, a fugitive from the face of man, fled 
away with the blood of his brother on his soul ! 
So did mother after mother cherish in her heart 
the fond hope that hers should be the seed that 
should bruise the serpent's head. But ages passed 
by, — ages of sin and suffering and wrong, — and 
all hopes were baffled, all expectation denied, until 
the hours of time's fulness came. Then in a man- 
ner ineffable, mysterious, wonderful, the power of 
the Highest came upon a virgin in the house of 
David. He in whose image man had been made 
became a man. In indissoluble union the God- 
head and the manhood became one. In majesty 
and in humility the creating God and the arche- 
typal man appeared in God-manhood. Prophecy 
had dimly foreseen Him and had hailed Him afar 



THE DIGNITY OF MAX. 



off. It had given Him many names and titles of 
honor and of power; but when He came, He 
came wearing the old title of Saviour, bearing the 
old name of Jehoshua, Joshua, Jesus. But in Him 
it had a new signification, and was destined to win 
a new glory; for it meant that He was to save 
His people from their sins. 

Let us think then of Jesus this morning as a 
Saviour, and of His redemption as salvation from 
sin. Let us think of all that He was and of all 
that He did, and of His work and life as a whole. 
In three respects man's state because of sin was 
desperate, and, humanly speaking, remediless; that 
is to say, in respect of his ignorance, his guilt, his 
weakness. To these Jesus came to apply the ap- 
propriate remedy; namely, truth, atonement, grace. 
And first, one part of His work of salvation He 
wrought by the revelation which He was, and 
which He made of the true meaning of time and 
of the world, of man, of eternity, of God. If we 
consider the incarnate life of the Son of God as 
a theophany and a revealing, we see at once what 
power it had, and still has, to rescue man from the 
blind error which is a part of sin. In Jesus, man 
sees God as He is. And wakened by this vision 
He sees time and the world as they really are. 
The false theories of life on which sin proceeds 
are all contradicted in Him. Every falsehood 
which the world's enchantment tells, every delu- 
sion which it weaves with its Circean spell, finds 
its refutation in Him. Part of the power of sin 
lies in its specious delusions. Among these delu- 



REDEMPTION. 



133 



sions is the lie that the world is all; the lie that 
sensual pleasure is good, that passion is strong, 
that pride is majestic, that disobedience is wise. 
Behold how Jesus came and refuted all these im- 
memorial lies. He came in meekness, humility, 
obedience, renouncing self, and force, and pride, 
and the world ; and doing this He acted the God. 
Ah, what a lesson it was that He taught, namely, 
that God is meek: therefore to be meek is to be 
godlike and great; that God is gentle and loving 
and merciful: therefore it is great and godlike 
to be merciful and loving and gentle. And He 
taught that this world is not all, but is only a 
fleeting shadow; that the true world is the un- 
seen world where God is and the angels are; and 
that it is only by renouncing this world that its 
real good is to be had and the real world is to be 
won. And then He reintroduced the mighty prin- 
ciple into the world, the golden clew which man- 
had lost and could not find, the majestic secret 
of the Divine government itself ; and that was the 
principle of self-sacrifice, the principle of the cross, 
by which He overcame the world. In all, then, 
that He did, and in all that He taught, in all that 
He was and suffered and has become, in the 
majesty of His unequalled wisdom and influence, 
this is the sum of what He taught. He taught 
what God is, and what man was intended to be. 
And doing this He showed the shame, the false- 
ness, the enormity of sin. He showed the gran- 
deur of meekness, the majesty of humility, the 
strength of obedience, the power of self-sacrifice, 



134 THE DIGNITY OF MAX. 

the glory of love. Doing this He showed that He 
was the wisdom and the power of God. Beneath 
the illuminating splendor of that teaching all the 
falsehoods of sin and worldliness are exposed. A 
radiance from another world breaks through upon 
the life of man. To the eye of faith the unseen 
things are seen to be the great things, and eternal 
life to be the real life ; and the soul's dignity and 
peace are the only concern that is worthy of a 
man, compared with which the whole world is 
as nothing. For " What shall it profit a man if 
he shall gain the whole world and lose his own 
soul? " 

But it is not ignorance alone that keeps the soul 
back from its own destiny, and constitutes the 
power of sin. Xo doubt ignorance, obscuration, 
the blotting out of the higher truths, the dimming 
of man's spiritual vision, are among the worst 
effects of sin ; and the clearing of the vision, the 
removing of the cloud of ignorance, constitutes 
a noble part of Christ's redemption. But this is 
not all. Xot only ignorance, but guilt, stands like 
a barrier between the sinner and God. And this 
guilt is not only regarded by Divine justice, but 
also by human apprehension. The sense of guilty 
desert, of amenability to condemnation, the guilty 
sense of demerit and unworthiness, operates to 
drive the soul from God. No matter how clear 
the persuasion of those great truths which Christ 
revealed ; no matter how deep the conviction of 
sin and of its helplessness. Nay, all the more be- 
cause of the vision of glory, and the consequent 



REDEMPTION. 



135 



sense of sin's enormity, does the sense of guilty 
desert drive the sinner from God. There is need, 
then, of atonement, of satisfaction. Not only does 
God's holiness demand it (and of that I am not 
speaking now), but man's guilty fear calls out for 
it. The soul must feel that its guilty desert is 
taken away. And herein no shame, no artificial 
pretence of reconciliation, will suffice. The guilty 
soul will venture upon nothing less than a full, per- 
fect, and sufficient oblation and satisfaction. Ah, 
long and wearily has man prosecuted his solemn 
quest for some adequate expiation for his guilt! 
In bloody rites, in human holocaust, in grim and 
awful sacrifices, and still in costly ceremonials and 
ascetic observances ; but all in vain. Peace can 
nowhere be found in all the world but at the foot 
of the cross, and in the vision of the Lamb that 
was slain to take away the sins of the world. By 
faith the sinner sees that that sacrifice was made 
for him ; by faith he appropriates and makes it 
his own ; by faith he wears the marks of it in his 
daily life. And so his guilt}- fear is banished. He 
feels that satisfaction is made. The spirit of bond- 
age is banished by the spirit of adoption, whereby 
he cries, Abba, Father. Being justified by faith, 
he has peace with God. 

But even this is not enough. Xot only is there 
ignorance or error, and guilt, but infirmity. Man 
needs not only truth and peace ; he needs grace, 
help from another world, power from on high. 
And this too is purchased and provided for in 
Christ's redemption. We have seen, indeed, how 



136 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 



the whole effect of His work and life has been to 
give man health, in revealing the truth, in bring- 
ing life and immortality to light, in taking our 
guilt away. But He has done more. He has or- 
ganized the means of grace in the faithful use of 
which His people get life and healing from him; 
and above all He has sent the Holy Spirit, — the 
life-giving spirit that reawakens the principle of 
life in the soul; the spirit of truth to guide us into 
all truth; the spirit which convicts of sin, which 
moves to repentance, which awakens faith whereby 
we appropriate salvation, which " helpeth our in- 
firmities/' which gives us joy and peace in believ- 
ing, which bears witness with our spirit that we 
are the children of God. 

Then, let us sum up all. Sin is darkness: Jesus 
is light. Sin is guilt: Jesus is peace. Sin is weak- 
ness: Jesus is strength. Faith appropriates Him. 
Conscience chooses Him. Love claims Him. He 
is our Saviour. He saves us from our sins. 



SERMON V. 



ETERNAL LIFE. 1 

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and 
believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not 
come into condemnation ; but is passed from death unto life. — St. 
John v. 24. 

T N the minds of many thoughtful and devout 
X people, a confused and mistaken notion exists 
in regard to the terms " eternal life " and " eternal 
death," and the application of these terms to the 
soul. The physical catastrophe which we call 
death is so obtrusive and overwhelming a fact that 
we are apt to suppose that all death is a catastro- 
phe, and that the soul's eternal life is something 
which does not begin until this earthly life is over. 
The truth is, that the terms " eternal life " and 
" eternal death," as applied to the soul, denote 
states or conditions of existence which are begun 
here and simply continue forever hereafter. If we 
study the New Testament Scriptures freshly and 
intelligently, we find that this is among the palmary 
truths brought to light by the gospel, — a truth 
too often neglected, too often overlooked, but 
one which, when rightly comprehended, is of the 

1 Preached in St. Paul's Church, Detroit, on the morning of the 
fourth Sunday in Advent, 1884. 



138 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 



greatest dignity and importance. Among the 
many passages in the Divine Word which teach 
this, the one which I have just read sufficiently in- 
dicates its meaning and scope. You will observe 
here that everlasting life is a thing which a man is 
declared, on certain conditions, to have in this 
world ; that the death which is its contradictory is 
said to be escaped in this world, and in the very 
act of passing over into life ; and that the condi- 
tion of escaping the one and having the other is 
faith in God through Jesus. " Verily, verily, I say 
unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth 
on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall 
not come into condemnation ; but it passed from 
death unto life." 

Now, of the state which is here denominated 
eternal death I need not speak this morning further 
than to repeat that it is a state belonging to the 
sinful, unbelieving soul in this world, out of which 
it is here declared possible for the soul now and 
here to escape. This death of the sou] is not a 
catastrophe, but a condition or state, and we have 
already seen whence it arises and what it is. It is 
the degenerating, desolating, deadening effect of 
sin upon the soul and all its higher faculties and 
powers. In sin, the soul renounces its true dignity 
and turns from its true destiny. The powers in- 
tended to apprehend, to choose, to love eternal 
things, are voluntarily surrendered to the base and 
transitory things of time and sense. The baser 
passions and propensities of man control his life, 
and as a consequence the soul's higher faculties 



ETERNAL LIFE. 



139 



begin to dwindle, to degenerate, to languish. And 
this continuous progressive debasement and decay is 
known by the awful name of eternal death. It be- 
gins now, it is set up here in this life ; and the dread- 
ful thing about it is that unless the one remedy be 
faithfully and timely applied it must persist, this 
dying of the soul, and must go on forever. For 
we have seen that of itself it never runs its course; 
that it has no power in itself to recover, to react, 
or to cease ; that there is no healing or restoring 
power in penalty, in punishment or anguish ; that, 
short of the one remedy, apart from the one Saviour 
and Restorer, it is altogether remediless, and must 
get worse and worse, more helpless, more hope- 
less, more despairing, as long as the immortal soul 
shall exist, — that is, forever and forever. 

Eternal life, on the other hand, is also a state of 
the soul that begins here. It is simply the soul's 
true life, — a life the movements of which, as we 
have already seen, consist in apprehending truth, 
choosing right, loving good, in the doing of which 
man's true nature expands into all the dignity and 
nobility for which God designed him when He made 
him in His own image and after His own likeness. 
In the text we are told that this mighty inward 
movement of the soul whereby it appropriates sal- 
vation and grace is faith in God through Jesus. 
Here, then, is the great truth of the gospel, — the 
Son of God has purchased redemption for us. His 
great and holy name is justified in all the fulness 
of its divine meaning, in that He lived and died and 
rose again, and now lives to save His people from 



140 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



their sins; and by faith we appropriate what He 
has done, and pass from death to life. And let no 
one suppose that this in itself is a light matter or a 
small thing. It is the soul's triumph over all that 
is unworthy and base. " This is the victory that 
overcometh the world, even our faith." The reve- 
lation made by Jesus was of truths that were ab- 
solutely undiscoverable by man. It was not that 
they were mysterious, or complex, or transcenden- 
tal, but they were so contradictory to the pride and 
self-sufficiency of the sinful heart. All the imagi- 
nations of man's confused and perverted mind were 
overthrown and set at nought. The strange hu- 
mility in which He came and acted the God ; the 
meekness in which He showed Divine things and 
the Divine power to men ; the marvellous renun- 
ciation of the world and of self ; the deep and 
tender lessons of love which He exemplified and 
taught; and finally, the strange, unearthly lesson 
of the cross, the path of absolute self-sacrifice 
which He trod, and in which He bade his disciples 
to follow Him as the only road from earth to the 
skies, — these were lessons and these were truths 
the living apprehension and the living appropria- 
tion of which do constitute the soul's victory over 
the world, in which the soul does pass from death to 
life. I need not enlarge upon the heroic character 
of this achievement. I need not dwell upon the 
unwelcomeness of such a plan of salvation to the 
human heart. Just as of old, the turning to Christ 
means turning away from the world ; the choosing 
of Christ means the renunciation of the world ; 



ETERNAL LIFE. 



141 



belief in God means an awakening to a sense of 
the vanity and unworthiness of the world, and the 
transfer of the affections from the phenomenal to 
the real, from the seen to the unseen, from the vain 
and transitory to the abiding and eternal. And 
this is not less difficult now than it has ever been 
since the world's enchantment first cast its spell 
upon the soul of man. The glamour of sense is not 
less fascinating now than when in olden days the 
siren voices of Circe's nymphs floated over dancing 
waves to lure the strong Ulysses and his wandering 
companions to their ruin. Nay, it is all the more 
seductive and dangerous now, because it comes to 
us, to so many of us, in the sober guise of worldly 
business or society, of worldly thrift, of worldly 
care, of worldly prudence. But if with true strength 
and constancy of soul we refuse to be betrayed 
into a forgetfulness of our birthright; if in the 
midst of all worldly pleasures and worldly cares we 
insist that our souls shall live their true life ; if 
amid the din and roar of this world's busy pur- 
suits we bend the ear of the spirit to catch the 
Divine Word, and with living faith believe not in 
time and the world only, but in eternity and God, 
then shall eternal life abide in us. For " he that 
heareth my word and believeth on him that sent me 
hath everlasting life, and shall not come into con- 
demnation ; but is passed from death unto life." 

Now, what I wish to do to-day, is to point out to 
you the dignity and the joy of this true life of the 
soul, this everlasting life of faith ; and if we can 
know the secret of its blessedness here, we shall 



142 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



know what its blessedness shall be hereafter. For 
the redeemed and ransomed soul simply lives on 
from this world into the next; and the blessedness, 
the gladness, the joy that it has here, it shall have 
the same in kind, though in larger measure, forever 
hereafter. 

And first, to the justified soul there is the joy of 
living its true life. The soul has its proper life; 
and in the very living of it freely, without the 
confusion and discord of sin, there is deep and in- 
effable gladness. We look around us and see the 
joyousness of all undiseased, unfettered, and undis- 
turbed life. All living creatures seem to exult, and 
'often to break out in transports of joy, in the very 
act and sense of living. With verdure clad, and 
in light arrayed, the fields and hillsides afford a 
scene on which the flocks and herds disport them- 
selves in spring, while from the leafy choirs of 
overhanging woods the birds pour forth exultant 
strains of song, and even the flowers, the beautiful 
flowers, seem to smile with gladness, as if it were 
a very joy to be beautiful and to live. You all 
remember the beautiful little idyl of Wordsworth, 
whose great poetic soul was always so profoundly 
stirred at the sight of Nature's beauty and life. He 
said : — 

" I wandered lonely as a cloud 

That floats on high o'er vales and hills, 
When all at once I saw a cloud, 

A host of golden daffodils, 
Beside the lake, beneath the trees, 
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. 



ETERNAL LIFE. 



143 



" Continuous as the stars that shine 

And twinkle on the Milky Way, 
They stretched in never ending line 

Along the margin of a bay : 
Ten thousand saw I at a glance, 
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. 

"The waves beside them danced, but they 
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee : 
A poet could not but be gay 
In such a jocund company. 
I gazed and gazed, but little thought 
What wealth the show to me had brought. 

" For oft when on my couch I lie 
In vacant or in pensive mood, 
They flash upon that inward eye 
Which is the bliss of solitude, 
And then my heart with pleasure fills, 
And dances with the daffodils." 

So in all life there is joy; much more in the 
soul's true life. In the free exercise of its noblest 
faculties ; in the free use of its noblest powers ; in 
the free apprehension of Divine truth, the free 
choosing of the right, the unselfish loving of the 
beautiful and the good, — it is a joy even now and 
here so to live the true life of the soul. And when 
we come to analyze this joy, we find that in all its 
details it is a life of blessedness. For, first, there 
is the joy of triumph, the gaudiam certaminis, that 
courts and enjoys the well-won victory. For as all 
life is a conflict and a victory over whatsoever 
hinders or attacks it, much more is the soul's true 
life a continual conflict and victory. Sense, with 



144 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



all its delusions and new sorceries, interposes to 
obscure or terminate the soul's lofty vision of far- 
off truth. Evil, with all its seductive wiles, attempts 
to betray the soul to sin and wrong. Worldly and 
carnal pleasures woo the soul's affections from their 
true and worthy objects. To resist these is con- 
flict worthy of heroic souls ; to stand steadfast, to 
be true to truth, goodness, to righteousness, — this 
is victory, and the joy of it is bliss to the strug- 
gling, conquering soul. And when the soul's vic- 
torious inner life is translated into worthy outward 
action, that outward life becomes heroic too, — the 
life of a knightly soul that proves its knighthood 
and receives its reward in scattering error, in right- 
ing wrong, in helping the weak, in relieving the 
oppressed, and in doing his duty to God and all 
the world. 

And then there is the joy of progress. For the 
soul's true life is a progress from the less to the 
greater, from the partial to the more perfect good. 
At first its movements are feeble, its apprehensions 
of truth are dim and confused ; the motions of its 
moral nature are indistinct; the play of its spiritual 
affections is unsteady. But as the soul's life ad- 
vances, all these nobler functions are better dis- 
charged, all its nobler faculties grow stronger. 
Temptations that were once mighty become power- 
less; sins that were once easy become impossible. 
The spell of worldliness is broken ; the soul ex- 
pands to the measure of the stature of a man in 
Christ Jesus. There is growth in humility, and 
so there is no more galling and fretting of pride. 



ETERNAL LIFE. 



H5 



There is growth in meekness, and so the burden of 
resentment is laid aside- There is growth in faith, 
and so the unseen things are seen with more and 
more distinctness to be the great thing. There is 
growth in hope, and so the soul grows glad and 
young as it lays hold on the hope of eternal life. 
There is growth in love, — in the blissful love that 
never faileth, that suffereth long and is kind, that 
is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil ; that bear- 
eth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all 
things, endureth all things. 

And then there is the joy of self-sacrifice. Self- 
sacrifice for duty and for love is the very joy of the 
soul's true life. Here, now, is a great and recondite 
truth. Man had forgotten it. With all his think- 
ing he could not rediscover it; with all his search- 
ing he could not find it out. But God revealed it 
in Jesus. And revealing it He showed not only 
the Divine wisdom and power, but also the Divine 
blessedness. In his selfishness man had tried all 
other kinds of sacrifice in his quest for some kind 
of offering that his soul might delight in. For he 
dimly knew that somehow, not in getting merely, 
but in giving, his soul's true wealth must con- 
sist. So he lavished wildly of all his costliest 
and best. In Oriental splendor, in Greek beauty, 
in Roman pageantry, in barbaric pomp and mag- 
nificence, he prosecuted his despairing quest for 
some way to get the hidden bliss that belongs to 
loving, when suddenly the cross of Jesus flashed 
the Divine truth upon the weary world. In self- 
sacrifice love finds its bliss, its hidden joy, its 

10 



146 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



secret gladness. It is a lesson for heroic souls, 
and the world with characteristic cowardice shrinks 
from it; but even the world is learning at last this 
great lesson of the cross. When we look around 
us, we see that selfishness not only works almost 
all the evil that man inflicts on man, but that self- 
ishness is the great woe of the human heart Not 
only does it work the sorrow which the drunkard, 
the gambler, the thief, the libertine inflict on others, 
but it makes them what they are, and is always to 
them the poisoned source of unhappiness and un- 
rest. The selfish man is always the unblest man. 
No selfish soul is happy. Selfishness always fails 
of its aim; it always misses its mark. But in lov- 
ing and dutiful self-sacrifice the soul finds its joy 
and its exaltation, even as Jesus our great Exem- 
plar, who for the joy that was set before Him en- 
dured the cross, despising the shame, and is even 
set down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. 
Who does not understand something of this? Who 
are the great and happy souls of earth? Not those, 
assuredly, who look for base ease, or sordid gain, 
or selfish advantage, or guilty pleasure; but the 
pure and strong and lofty souls, who in loving the 
unseen and following lofty ideals gladly sacrifice 
themselves for what they love. The patriot who 
goes at his country's summons to battle ; the father 
and husband who scorns delight and lives labo- 
rious days for wife and children ; the mother who 
turns away, from all delights to bend in yearning 
tenderness above the couch of her sick or afflicted 
child ; the Christian man and woman who in lov- 



ETERNAL LIFE, 



1 47 



ing, dutiful deeds of brotherly love and good-will de- 
light to help the unfortunate and make the wretched 
happy, — these are the great and happy souls, and 
in their self-sacrifice they find the highest joy of 
their soul's true life. 

In a word, then, the soul's true life in this world 
is the life of faith, hope, and of love. In the vic- 
tory of its faith, the progress of its hope, the glad 
self-sacrifice of its love, its joy consists. And oh, 
dear brethren, compared with this joy, how utterly 
vain and unsatisfying are all the other joys of 
earth ! For all other joys are outside of man, and 
cannot reach the centre of his being. Therefore, 
you may lavish all imaginable splendor and all 
imaginable wealth upon man, and if he have not 
the secret joy, this peace of God in his heart, the 
soul is restless and wretched, and poor and un- 
satisfied. But with this joy and gladness in the 
heart, the soul's true life is blissfully, peacefully 
lived, spite of sorrow, spite of pain, spite of care ; 
nay, it is lived through these, and through the dark 
valley and shadow of death itself, into the fuller, 
richer, more abounding life beyond the grave. 

And this brings me to my concluding thought. 
We have seen what the soul's true life in this world 
is. What shall it be in the next world but the 
same in kind, though in fuller, larger measure? In 
an age of curious and adventurous research like 
this, it is impossible not to feel a profound interest 
in what, after all, is the great mystery of all mys- 
teries, — the life beyond the grave. As knowledge 
grows and thought widens, men become more and 



148 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



more intolerant of mystery. For long ages the 
great river of Egypt flowed out of mystery to the 
sea. Year by year it rose and fell, overflowing its 
banks and fertilizing all the plain. Mighty empires 
rose and flourished along its course. Toiling 
millions builded the great pyramids to be the 
monuments of forgotten greatness. Dynasty after 
dynasty ruled and passed away. The great Sphinx, 
with mournful visage, saw them come and go, and 
still the great river rose and fell, and no man knew 
and no man guessed the secret of its annual in- 
undation. But this age could not longer brook 
the great secret that lay concealed in the heart 
of the dark continent. Traveller after traveller, ad- 
venturer after adventurer, set out to discover the 
source of the Nile, and so to solve the mystery. 
With increasing eagerness and in larger number 
the men pressed forward. Many went, but few 
returned, until at last the secret was discovered. 
So also into the mystery that broods in icy deso- 
lation over the Polar Seas. Men have gone and 
perished, and still have gone, and are ready still 
to go, to find the secrets of that wild waste whose 
icy barriers have hitherto defied the adventurous 
efforts of man. Still more do men long to know 
something of that undiscovered country from whose 
bourn no traveller returns. Into its darkness all 
the generations of men have hitherto journeyed, 
with trembling steps and slow, sed nulla vestigia 
retrorsam. Who, then, shall % tell us of it? Who 
shall disclose the majestic secrets of the future life 
of the soul? We look in vain to speculative phi- 



ETERNAL LIFE. 



149 



losophy. Some splendid guesses it has made, but 
only guesses. We turn to Revelation ; but at first 
glance it seems to be strangely mute, as if it knew 
not, or had no message to tell. True, Lazarus 
once came back after four days and nights in the 
other world ; but we have no record that he ever 
told of the things that he heard and saw. And a 
greater than Lazarus, to whom that world was al- 
ways open, before whose vision it was always out- 
stretched, whose spirit was always bathed in its 
supernal glory, who passed as a visitant into that 
world through the gate of death, and then returned 
and companied forty days with His disciples, — 
even He has seemed to tell us nothing. Why is it? 
May it not be because there was very little to tell, 
except what we may know already? We know that 
the life of that other state of the soul's true life, 
the life eternal, begins here. We know what it is 
here. We know in what its joy and its everlasting 
nobleness and dignity consist here, — in the victory 
of faith, in the progress and aspiration of hope, in 
the joy of self-sacrificing love. Must not these 
continue to be the sources of its blessedness here- 
after? The only difference shall be that the limi- 
tations of sin, the hindrances of earthliness, shall 
be removed. Unfettered and free, the soul shall 
expand in the perpetual delight of life and love 
and peace, — the delight of growing knowledge, 
the delight of more and more adequate utterance, 
the security and peace of more perfect self-con- 
secration, the deep and tender joy of more entire 
self-sacrifice. How this shall be, I cannot tell. 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



Nor do I care to hear of elysian fields and sunny 
slopes, of celestial towers and golden streets. The 
imagery with which prophets and seers have pic- 
tured that world and its employments may be 
reality or metaphor. For one, I do not care to 
know. It is enough for me to know this one 
thing, — that the soul's true life, the eternal life, be- 
gun here, shall continue after death substantially 
the same, and that its joys shall be the same, only 
fuller, larger, richer. Oh, then, let me ask myself 
this question : Am I living now the soul's true 
life, — the everlasting life of faith and hope and 
love, — and am I finding now and here the joy and 
the blessedness of that life? If not, then even 
heaven itself would be a hell to my untutored soul. 
But if I do know the joy and peace of believing, 
then eternal life is mine already. 



SERMON VI. 



THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES. 1 

The Pharisees also with the Sadducees came, and tempting 
desired him that he would show them a sign from heaven. He an- 
swered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say, It will be 
fair weather : for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be 
foul weather to-day : for the sky is red and lowering. O ye hypo- 
crites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern 
the signs of the times? — St. Matt. xvi. 1-3. 

IT was characteristic of the religion of Jesus 
Christ, that among all the religions which have 
solicited the consent of mankind, it was the first to 
refuse to appeal to the lying wonders which super- 
stition craved ; that from the first it refused to rest 
its claims to acceptance on portent or even on mir- 
acle merely; but it rested them rather on the truth 
which it proclaimed, and the fitness of that truth 
to the need of the world. When at cultured Athens 
or warlike Sparta an enterprise requiring conduct 
or valor was meditated, it was the custom to send 
a messenger across plain and mountain to Delphi, 
to hear from the lips of the Priestess of Apollo the 
mystic words which might tell of its success or fail- 
ure. When a conquest was projected at ancient 
Rome, after the legions were mustered and the 

1 Preached in Christ Church, Detroit, on the morning of the 
first Sunday in Advent, 1S85. 



152 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



plans were laid, it was customary to send an augur 
to some neighboring height, to watch the portents 
of the sky and read the omens of the hour; and 
if the flight of birds were auspicious, or Jove thun- 
dered from the left, or other favorable augury 
appeared, then and then only did the embattled 
legions dare to take up the line of march to 
the enemy's country. But the Christian soldier, 
though he too would fain know something of the 
coming time, may well disdain all the superstitions 
of divination, even as his great Leader disdained 
them. Jesus laid down the only principle of gen- 
uine prognostication, the only principle of scien- 
tific augury, when He bade men study the signs of 
the times in their attempts to forecast the future. 
For the evening foretells the morning, and the 
morning leads on the day. All the hours are 
linked together, and each as it takes its flight 
ushers in a kindred hour. Therefore it is that 
''thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs;" 
and we must read the signs of the times that now 
are, if we would guess what the future of the world 
is to be. 

In this series of Advent Sermons I desire to 
speak of the work which lies before the Church of 
Christ in this land and age. In doing this, though 
I must speak without reserve of hindrances as well 
as of helps, of portents of evil as well as portents 
of good, yet I stand here as one who looks for 
victory, for I believe in the coming triumph of our 
Lord. All around us there are, I believe, the signs 
of the coming of His power; but because those 



THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES. 



iS3 



signs abound, it behooves us to set our house in 
order; to reform whatsoever is amiss in our own 
economies and the working of them; to sound the 
call to duty throughout all our borders; to cast 
away the works of darkness and put upon us the 
armor of light, because our salvation is nearer than 
when we believed. In this first sermon, therefore, 
I shall briefly and rapidly discourse on the great 
and beneficent career which Anglo-Saxon Chris- 
tianity ought to accomplish in this land and age, 
and of the personal effort and consecration which 
we ought to yield in its service. Then in the fol- 
lowing sermons I shall speak of the function and 
mission of the same Christianity, and of the evils 
that it ought to correct in our domestic, our busi- 
ness, our social life. 

Let me then in the briefest and simplest way 
speak of the general course which Christian activity 
and beneficence may be reasonably expected to 
take in this land, if we are faithful. To do this in 
an oracular way would of course be rash and pre- 
sumptuous ; but to be an observer of contempo- 
rary facts and tendencies, and to try to interpret 
the meaning of them, is something, surely, which 
can be undertaken by the humblest and most self- 
distrustful. The problem of the future of Chris- 
tianity in this land is to be worked out by factors 
that are in operation now; and the character and 
operation of those factors are among the signs of 
the times which w r e can discern and interrogate if 
we will. Among those factors some are constant 
and unchanging; as, for instance, the ever-present 



154 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



evil of sin, the undiminishing corruption of unre- 
generate human nature, the ceaseless activity of the 
Spirit of grace, and the inexhaustible efficacy of 
the old gospel of love and power. God's reve- 
lation of His will, moreover, in His written Word 
and in His Church's fixed faith and unchanging: 
order, are among the constant factors which we 
may count on in our effort to read the problem of 
the future. Other factors are to be found in the 
operation of certain great economical, ethnological, 
political laws which are now at work, and which 
establish a certain stream of tendency or current 
of wants which we may estimate with more or less 
accuracy. And last of all, there are the factors of 
personal effort, personal faithfulness, personal de- 
votion, which, while they are the most variable of 
all, are yet those which most entirely depend on 
ourselves and our children. I will venture, then, to 
speak this morning of the work of Christianity in 
this land and age: (i) From a consideration of the 
people and the civilization in the midst of which 
it is to be carried forward ; (2) From a consideration 
of the means and agencies with which this Church 
is equipped for carrying it on ; and (3) From a con- 
sideration of the personal effort and personal devo- 
tion which we are called to apply to it. 

First, then, of the people and the civilization of 
this great country. It is customary to say that 
our people are now, and must continue to be, a 
composite people, made up of elements so various 
that as a whole our people must differ materially 
from every other people on the face of the globe. 



THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES. 



155 



And, indeed, when we study our history, and the 
statistics of emigration to this land, we find that 
the Keltic, the Saxon, the Teutonic, the Scandina- 
vian, the Latin races have all come hither in large 
though unequal numbers, bringing their own char- 
acteristics and traditions with them, and that here 
they have freely mingled together under the pro- 
tection of equal laws. From this it might be ex- 
pected that the resulting race would be a new 
people altogether, differing from all others as the 
tertiam quid of the chemist is unlike the simples 
of which it is compounded. And yet when we 
come to look at the people of this land, we find as 
a matter of fact that there is no such variation from 
the original type on which all these varieties have 
been grafted as one would suppose. With such 
slight differences as are to be accounted for on 
other grounds, the American people continue to 
be a branch of the great English race, keeping 
the ideal English type, English minded and Eng- 
lish hearted, re-enacting the laws of Alfred, and 
speaking the language of Shakspeare and Milton. 

Now, the fact that the people of this land have 
continued unwaveringly and persistently to be 
English in civilization, in spite of the enormous 
dilution by emigration that has been going on for 
a hundred years, is a fact of immense significance. 
Millions of other races have come hither, — Kelts, 
Latins, Scandinavians, Slavs, — but they have 
not been able in the slightest degree to vary our 
civilization from its English type and character. 
It was but a handful of Englishmen that came 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



to Virginia, New England, New York, Pennsyl- 
vania, the Carolinas, Georgia; and yet they so 
impressed their ethnical type upon this nation 
that they have made it Anglican forever. The 
reasons for this are significant and instructive. 
There is not time to consider them here. Suffice 
it to say that the fact is by no means isolated 
or accidental. From the first, that race of Anglo - 
landers and their congeners who came from the 
banks of the Zuyder Zee have been so persistent 
that they have refused to part with any of their 
characteristics as they have mingled with other 
races. Wherever they have gone, they have given 
their civilization to all with whom they have min- 
gled. You will find a survival of the old Anglo- 
Saxon hundred in the New England town-meeting 
and in the Michigan town-meeting; and you will 
find trial by jury, and the habeas corpus, and the 
English school, and the English home, — even as 
you find everywhere the English language and 
English laws. These institutions endure, and they 
in turn help to mould all comers to the one type 
of free manhood in this free land. Alien races 
that come hither are emancipated of their race 
peculiarities. In our free atmosphere, beneath 
our open sky, their children are made over, as 
it were, and transformed into American citizens; 
and as a result we soon see them speaking the 
English language, reading English Bibles, living 
in English homes. I have not the time now to 
speak of this as I would. All I can now say 
is that this mighty people, though a composite 



THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES. 



157 



people as to its elements, is, and shall forever be, 
homogeneous in its character; and that whatsoever 
form of religion is best suited to the needs and 
idiosyncrasies of the English-speaking races is 
the religion which is charged with the great, the 
awful responsibility of shaping their social and 
religious destiny. 

Now, I am sure you will acquit me of the shal- 
low presumption of ecclesiastical pretentiousness 
in bringing these considerations before you. My 
simple purpose is that we should realize our op- 
portunities and responsibilities as a Church in this 
land; for as our opportunities, so are our respon- 
sibilities, great and constantly increasing. Be- 
lieving that great and awful responsibilities rest 
upon this Church as the historical Church of the 
Anglo-Saxon race, it must humble and sober us 
even to recount them; nay, it would doubtless 
discourage us to face our responsibilities unless 
at the same time we might lean on the thought 
that God's providence in history has sent this 
Church to this land to be our guide in faith and 
morals, and that He has equipped her with special 
agencies to do His work among this great people. 
For in the first place this historic Church, around 
which all the noblest traditions of Anglo-Saxon 
Christianity have clustered, supplies to the people 
of this land the one venerable authority in religion 
which it is the instinct of our people to long for; 
for with all their progressiveness, they do cling 
to what is customary, and venerate what has come 
down from their own past. This is obvious in 



i S 8 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



manners, customs, laws ; as time goes on it will 
be more and more obvious in religion also. In 
the next place, her advantage is great in her sober, 
ethical, undogmatic teaching, free from metaphysi- 
cal subtlety, free from superstition, mysticism, false 
enthusiasm, — a religion of manly and womanly 
activity. One of the most marked peculiarities 
of this as of all English-speaking races is their 
intolerance of all mere sentimentalism and mys- 
ticism ; the devotion of their thought to what is 
practical. In the long run they refuse to be mis- 
led by false enthusiasms, such as make the French 
doctrinaire, the Latin mystical, the German tran- 
scendental, the Irish superstitious. Nothing can 
long hold the allegiance of their minds and their 
hearts but what is sober, undogmatic, practical ; 
and this it is which distinguishes the tone and 
temper of Anglo-Saxon Christianity. Next, it is 
her advantage and her glory that she is the one 
Church which has always put duty and conscience 
to the fore; which in every Sunday morning ser- 
vice, in the reading of God's eternal law, invokes 
conscience, appeals to conscience, respects con- 
science, and then leaves conscience free to make 
and enforce its judgments. This has been the 
course of the Englishman's love of liberty the 
wide world over, because liberty has thus been 
made to him a sacred thing, chastened by the 
responsibilities of moral freedom; for long before 
the battle of Trafalgar the English Church flung 
this signal to the breeze : The Church of England 
expects every man to do his duty. Lastly, the 



THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES. 



159 



Church has the great advantage of having a decent 
and stately, but at the same time a sober and 
reasonable, worship. For while this race does 
love a decent and stately ceremonial, anything 
that is fantastic, or sham, or unreal, it cannot 
long tolerate. It is its nature to express less than 
it feels rather than more. A certain reserve is 
the habit of its honest self-respect. Above all 
things it demands manly simplicity and reality ; 
and this it finds to its increasing contentment and 
spiritual peace in the simple, orderly, real worship 
of Anglo-Saxon Christianity. 

Now, to what do these considerations lead? To 
the thought, first, of the great responsibility, and 
then of the lofty dignity, of our calling as Christian 
men. Compared with the other agencies that are 
shaping the course and moulding the destiny of 
this community, of this people, the one agency 
of most surprising dignity and import is this: In 
all ages and in all lands man's religious interests 
are supreme. No matter what sky bends above 
him, nor in what scenes of beauty or grandeur his 
lot is cast, the one thought that redeems the world 
from commonplace is the thought of another. No 
matter what lofty enterprise engages him, nor what 
deeds of high emprise his strong right hand finds 
to do ; the one interest that always and everywhere 
ought to be his chiefest care is the interest that 
cleaves to his immortality. But here in this busy 
land, our sober, ethical, practical religion is more 
to us even than this. It lies at the foundation 
of our public liberty and national greatness. It 



i6o 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



sentinels our homes and guards our domestic 
purity and peace. It hovers over our society, to 
beat back with guardian wings the foul harpies 
of evil desire and unbridled passion that would 
batten on its innocent beauty. It stands an in- 
visible angel even in the hearts of trade, to smile 
on integrity and uprightness, and to shame fraud 
and double-dealing away. And this it does, not 
as an alien religion or foreign cult, but as one that 
is at home in this free land, and that is in full 
sympathy with all that is good in our national and 
social life. Nay, it is the genius of our Anglo- 
Saxon Christianity that has shaped our civiliza- 
tion and given us our liberty; and in guarding 
these from all harm she is but watching over her 
own, even as a mother yearns over her children 
whom she delights in. What nobler service, then, 
can men and women engage in than this? Where 
can you find an interest that makes such an appeal 
to all that is noble, high-minded, aspiring in man, 
as this work which is committed to the Churchmen 
of this land? 

What this work is in its domestic, social, busi- 
ness aspect, I am to try hereafter to tell you. Let 
me conclude now 7 with this single remark: I have 
briefly recounted some of the signs of the times, 
some of the omens of success that attend us. Let 
me not fail to say that there are not wanting some 
portents of evil in the horoscope of our busy 
and crowded future. He is blind and worse than 
blind who does not see vast and minatory dan- 
gers gathering thick on the right and on the 



THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES. 



161 



left and full in front of our path of progress. 
There are dangers of class combinations, wherein 
men will forfeit their personality and lose the 
dignity of their individuality. There are dangers 
of class conflicts, wherein all that is sacred will 
be overthrown. There are dangers of materialism 
with its degrading influence, and of intemperance 
and passion with their Circean spell, to convert 
men into swinish brutes. There is a subtle scep- 
ticism in the air like a foul malaria, which is im- 
perilling the life of our people, because it bereaves 
them of their faith in all that is noble ; which is 
sapping the manhood of our men because it ob- 
scures their belief in the God in whose image 
man was made. What now is the duty of the 
hour but to rally on the standard of our great 
Captain ; for all the redeemed to gather around 
the altar, and thence, and in the strength there 
gained, to go forth to do valiantly for the Lord? 
In times and lands less favored than ours, when 
the hosts of heathenness raged around the borders, 
it was then that the plumed and belted knight 
rode forth to keep the marches, while Christian 
women hid themselves behind convent walls, to 
spend their nights in weeping, their days in prayer. 
But in these better days we have no feudal knight- 
hood, because all our men are called to be knights; 
and we need no cloistered nuns, because all our 
women are called to be sisters of mercy, women 
of prayer. In all our homes there may be saintly 
women and knightly, godly men. From their 
portals the one may issue forth as gentle ministers 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



of mercy to the poor, all the better and more 
Christ-like because no conventual garb marks 
them to be seen of men; while the other may 
pass along these streets to do deeds all the more 
knightly and true because the cross is in their 
hearts instead of on their shields, and because the 
weapons of their warfare are not carnal but spirit- 
ual. Yes, men and women can live as grandly 
and die as sweetly and as gloriously to-day as 
ever they did. And oh, this is what is needed 
to-day as much as ever, — that men should live, as 
you and I have known more than one to live, like 
Bayards and Galahads ; and should die as you and 
I have known them to die, like an Arthur who 
yielded up a stainless sword, or an Agnes who 
joyously went to meet the bridegroom as the 
sun was sinking to his rest at the hour of evening 
prayer. 



SERMON VII. 



HOME. 



God setteth the solitary in families. — Ps. lxviii. 6. 
HERE is a word which is peculiar to our 



English speech, — - so peculiar that it is im- 
possible to translate it accurately into any other 
language. It may therefore be said that the thing 
which it signifies is in its strictest sense peculiar to 
those to whom that speech is the mother tongue ; 
and that word is Home. In its larger meaning it 
may be said that the religion of our Lord Jesus 
Christ created it. In its best meaning and high- 
est development we believe that it is chiefly to be 
found among those nations who use the good old 
word itself; that is, among the English-speaking 
peoples of the world. 

Some words contain a history in themselves, 
and are the monuments of great movements of 
thought and life. Such a word is Home. With 
something like a sacramental sacredness it enshrines 
a deep and precious meaning and a history. That 
the English-speaking people and their congeners 
alone should have this word, indicates that there 
are certain peculiar domestic and social traits of 

1 Preached in Christ Church, Detroit, on the morning of the 
second Sunday in Advent, 1885. 




THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



character belonging to them, of which this word is 
the monument and sign; and those traits have 
found their expression in the economy and order 
of the home. When we study their history we 
find that from the very first they have been dis- 
tinguished, as Tacitus tells us, by the manly and 
womanly virtues of fidelity and chastity; by the 
faithful devotion of wife to husband and husband 
to wife ; by the recognized headship and guardian- 
ship of the married man as indicated in the old 
word husband, and the domestic dignity and func- 
tion of the married woman as indicated in the 
old word wife, — betokening the presence of those 
home-making, home-keeping, home-loving quali- 
ties of mind and heart which have always belonged 
to this sturdy race. And when upon these ethni- 
cal qualities the vitalizing, sanctifying influence of 
Christianity was brought to bear, the outcome has 
been the building up of the noblest of all the in- 
stitutions of the Christian life. Therefore where 
the English language is spoken, this word is among 
the sweetest that human lips can fashion. There- 
fore where an English civilization is established, 
this institution enshrines all that is most precious 
to the human heart. No man is poor, no matter 
what storms of ill fortune have beaten upon him, 
who can still find refuge beneath its sacred shelter ; 
and no man is rich, no matter how splendid his 
fortune or his lot, who cannot claim some spot of 
earth as his home. 

My purpose, however, is neither philological nor 
ethnological. It is rather to speak to you to-day, 



HOME. 



I6 5 



in briefest, simplest language, of the function of 
Christianity in the home. However its economy 
has been modified by ethnical peculiarities, it is 
God who has set the solitary in families ; or, as the 
Hebrew may be more accurately translated into 
our English speech, " He hath set the solitary in 
the home." It is upon His unspeakable enactment 
that this great institution rests. Its function is to 
carry out His purposes in training and ennobling 
men to do His will. Its perfection is the reflection 
of His love in the majestic order of His Godhead 
with fatherhood, sonship, life; its beatitude is the 
maintenance on earth of the peace and purity of 
heaven. It is the model after which all the other 
institutions of our civil society are builded. The 
true unit of the social and civil structure is the 
man-woman, the husband and wife made one, 
dwelling together in unity and loving concord, 
with the children, the offspring and objects of 
their love, around them. In their relations with 
one another each finds his own completeness ; and 
all are hallowed and sanctified by the peace of 
God, which, if it reigns anywhere on earth, is 
surely to be found in the Christian home. 

Taking the Christian home as we know it, then, 
there are certain broad features of its economy 
the mention of which will serve to bring out its 
character. The first of these is its unity of orderly 
administration, in the supreme headship of one 
man, the husband ; the supreme dignity of one 
woman, the wife ; the providence of parental love 
in the nurture of children, and the natural piety of 



THE DIGNITY OF MAX. 



children in their reverence and obedience to their 
parents. Of course all these rest on monogamous 
marriage, that holy and ineffable bond which unites 
the wedded pair, and makes them one, — a bond 
which is the sacramental sign of a profound and 
mysterious oneness of soul and spirit, in which 
each personality is lost in the other, which there- 
fore the Divine Master declared to be indissoluble 
except by death. Marriage is the fulfilment of a 
divine law, without which no human being is com- 
plete. When God made man male and female, 
he enacted that each could not be complete with- 
out the other. The question which is superior is 
therefore idle. The one is the complement to the 
other. Made for one another, each finds com- 
pleteness only in holy matrimony, which is there- 
fore a noble vocation to which every one is called, 
and from which no one is entitled to turn away, 
when no insuperable obstacle is interposed to for- 
bid it. In marriage, then, and its resulting unity, 
the man is the husband and head, because in him 
strength, reason, justice abound; the woman is 
the wife and consort, because in her are to be 
found the gracious tact, the unerring instinct, the 
loyalty to love and duty, which are necessary to 
soften and humanize the strength, reason, justice 
of the man ; while the children are under supreme 
obligation to obedience and reverence, and are at 
the same time entitled to nurture, training, and 
care; for this is not only the honorable office, but 
it is likewise the highest duty of those who bring 
children into the world, — that they should not only 



HOME. 167 

love them, but also train and equip them for time 
and for eternity. 

With these preliminary observations, let us now 
briefly consider the Christian home, first with refer- 
ence to its discipline, then with reference to its 
education, then with reference to the blessedness 
that belongs to it, and lastly with reference to the 
dangers which threaten it. 

And first, with reference to the discipline of the 
home, it is to be remembered that there is a home 
discipline to which all the members thereof are 
subject, — the father and mother not less than the 
children. The husband and father, the wife and 
mother, while they are the source of authority in 
the home, are themselves under the authority of 
the God and Father of all, of whose great econ- 
omy they are the earthly representatives. The 
only basis, for instance, upon which the head- 
ship of the husband can securely rest, is in its 
conformity to the headship of Christ over His 
church. Saint Paul uttered a great and profound 
truth when he declared marriage to be the earthly 
homologue of that union in which Christ and His 
church are joined together; and it is only in fol- 
lowing Christ that the true function of the head 
of the home can be discharged. In Christ the 
husband sees the model of what he ought to be. 
From Him he learns that all his true authority 
is an authority to be derived from self-surrender; 
that all his real power is power to be derived from 
self-sacrifice. Wherever you see this principle 
obeyed by the head of the home, acting not as a 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



brutal tyrant or selfish despot, but as one who 
because he is strong surrenders himself, and who 
because he is large-minded, large-hearted, sacri- 
fices himself, there you see a real head of the 
home, whom all reverence and gladly obey. Oh, 
if the husbands, the heads of our homes, were only 
Christ-like men, men who rely not on external 
authority or external force, but on the authority 
and power which belong to loving self-sacrifice, 
believe me, almost all the domestic discord and 
confusion which so abound would disappear ! In 
this, as in all things, influence, success, greatness, 
are to be gained and learned at the feet of the 
great Master, who laid down the rule of all head- 
ship and leadership when He said, " Let him that 
would be greatest do ministry and service ; even 
as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, 
but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for 
many." 

Nor is the wife, the husband's consort, exempt 
from this discipline of self-sacrificing love. Such 
service, indeed, the fond mother-heart of woman is 
quick to render, and therein lies the hiding of her 
power. But this service is due not to children 
only, but to the husband as well. And this is to 
be shown not only in those gentle ministries of 
the home which every good wife is glad to render, 
and in the rendering of which her true queenship 
lies, but it is to be shown likewise in the rever- 
ence which she ought always to feel toward the 
husband. It was not for nothing that the apostle, 
in bidding the husband love and cherish his wife, 



HOME. 169 

adds the injunction, " And let the wife see that 
she reverence her husband." I know, indeed, that 
there often seems to be little or nothing to rever- 
ence ; and yet to the true wife there must always 
be something even in the weakest and most un- 
worthy. Just as the true son always sees some- 
thing to venerate in his mother, and the true 
husband always sees something to love in his wife, 
so does the true wife always see something to 
reverence in that manhood which God has given 
to her in her husband. And whensoever the wife 
acts on this principle she calls out what is noblest 
in her husband. She helps to make him like a 
prince, because with loving eyes she looks on him 
as a prince. She helps to make him like a king, 
because she expects him to act like a king. Nay, 
each can help to make the other what each be- 
lieves the other to be; and as the years roll on 
they grow more like each other and dearer to each 
other in the tender bonds of wedded love. 

So, likewise, the true basis on which parental 
authority over children rests, is the great fact of 
the fatherhood of God. It is only when parents 
look up and study that Divine fatherhood, — a 
fatherhood which wills the perfection of the chil- 
dren, and sets them the example of perfectness ; 
a fatherhood that knows how to hear and answer 
prayer, and to give all good things to those that 
ask ; nay, a fatherhood that knows how to give 
itself in utter self-sacrifice, the measure of whose 
love is the cross, — it is only when parents know 
how to study and catch the spirit of this father- 



170 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 



hood that they know how both to rule and care 
for their children. To such parental authority I 
need not say that children ought to be altogether 
obedient in all things. To such fatherhood and 
motherhood most children are in glad subjection. 
But in all cases the duty of the child to be in sub- 
jection and to obey in all things lawful is absolute. 
The true discipline of the home, while tender and 
loving, should never tolerate disobedience. The 
rule of the household ought never to be despotic. 
The utmost care should be exercised never to re- 
quire what is unreasonable, and not to require too 
much. But of this the parents must be the judge, 
and children should be lovingly trained in com- 
plete obedience. The characteristic sin of child- 
hood is disobedience, and it includes and leads on 
to all other sins. But obedience is the crown and 
grace of childhood, without which no child can 
learn to be strong and great ; without which no 
child can be lovable or lovely. 

These general considerations show plainly what 
the proper education is that belongs to the Chris- 
tian home. The Christian home is a school where- 
in the parents as well as the children learn divine 
things, not simply or chiefly from any didactic 
teaching, but from the harmonious working of 
these relations of headship, fatherhood, mother- 
hood, sonship, all chastened and ennobled by the 
loving self-sacrifice which pervades the Christian 
home. There are some aspects of those sublime 
truths, God's fatherhood, Christ's headship, the 
wisdom and power of the cross, that never can 



HOME. 



171 



be learned except as they are disclosed in the 
experiences of the Christian household. Such 
truths are not taught didactically, but are learned 
experimentally, — absorbed, as it were, into the 
thought and feeling of all its inmates, and made 
part of their very life. Therefore it is that the 
home is not only a school but a church. In its 
sanctuary all the most blessed truths of our holy 
religion are enshrined, and around the altar of its 
hearthstone its most benign influence is shed, to 
fit and train all who gather there, not only for the 
duties of time, but also for the dignities and labors 
of eternity. Therefore, so much depends on the 
religious life of the home, — not merely on its re- 
ligious teaching, but its religious life, — so much, 
that if this be right nothing else can be wholly 
wrong; so much, that if this be wrong nothing 
else can be altogether right. 

In the next place, let me speak just a word, in 
passing, of the dangers which beset it. I continue 
to speak of the Christian home. One trembles to 
think how frail and uncertain the foundation on 
which the unchristian home must rest. We grieve,- 
but we do not wonder, when such homes, with all 
their treasures, rush down to hideous ruin. But 
the Christian home. Let me speak of three only 
of the dangers which assail it, — care, worldliness, 
and passion. Just a word of each of these. 

And first, of care. The lives of all earnest men 
are full of care. Perhaps at no time in the world's 
history has the care of life set more heavily upon 
the workers and thinkers of the world than it does 



172 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



to-day. Much of this care, no doubt, is fruitless 
and needless. The remedy for it is the cheerful- 
ness that is born of inward peace. But much of 
the care of business and of thought is inevitable in 
this busy age. Men have to toil and struggle to 
keep their place while the busy world is moving. 
There is one thing that can be done, however, and 
that is, we can keep care away from the sacred 
precincts of the home. When the husband and 
father enters its portal he should always leave his 
cares behind him, and mingle with its joys with 
a light and happy heart. For lack of just this, 
many a home that would otherwise be happy is 
dark and desolate. The knitted brow of care will 
sadden and darken the brightest home. And this 
is true of the wife as well as the husband. How 
many Marthas make their home unhappy while 
they are cumbered with much serving! How 
many destroy the peace and blessedness of home 
because they are careful and troubled about many 
things ! 

Even more fatal to the peace and safety of the 
home is worldliness, — the worldliness of the hus- 
band which takes him away from his home in the 
calm evenings, which ought as a rule to be hal- 
lowed and sanctified there, to be spent at his 
counting-room, or at some place of amusement, 
or at his club. Men w r ho make this the rule of 
their lives soon abdicate the true headship of their 
homes ; nay, they often break up their homes or 
desolate them altogether. But even worse is the 
worldliness of the wife. Why need I speak of it? 



HOME. 



173 



Let me rather say this : No woman is fit to be 
the queen that she ought to be in her own house- 
hold, who does not, no matter what her station 
may be, find her chief pleasure and count her 
chief delight in the employments and endearments 
of her home. 

And lastly, passion. Not to speak of its darker 
aspects, — the fretful, peevish, irascible, ungovern- 
able temper, the hasty word, the harsh unloving 
look, the little neglects, the little unkindnesses, — 
oh, how often do these break up the peace, and 
finally desolate the home ! Therefore there is 
need of prayer in the home. Therefore there is 
need that the fire of sacrifice should be always 
kept burning on its altars. In order to keep these 
lurking demons, care, worldliness, and passion, 
from stealing in to work woful mischief there, 
there is need that the husband should be a man 
of God, that the wife should be a woman of prayer, 
and that the children should be trained in the ways 
and walks of godliness, and be brought up in the 
nurture and admonition of the Lord. 

But when this is so, then we see the blessedness 
of a Christian home. How shall I try to describe 
it? With what words shall I attempt to tell of its 
beatitude? Beneath its shelter alone can the care- 
worn toiler and thinker lay his heavy burden down ; 
in its calm haven alone can the weary or storm- 
tossed spirit find rest. All the precious things, or 
almost all, that the heart can really care for are 
there. Among its household words are all the 
fond terms of endearment that constitute affec- 



174 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 



tion's native speech. There the hands that do 
the toil and wield the power of the world become 
loving and tender in blessing. There the voices 
that command the applause of listening senates, 
or raise the shout among the captains of the 
world's warfare, become soft and gentle in bene- 
diction. There man is seen at his noblest, for 
there in gracious courtesy and service he acjts the 
king. There woman is seen at her loveliest and 
best, for there she is what the loving God gave 
her to man to be, — a helpmeet and a queen. 
There among the children of the household are 
to be seen the future rulers and toilers, the thinkers 
and workers, who are going to make this old world 
fairer and better than ever we have made it ; and 
in their very laughter and prattle we elders hear 
the sweeter, richer music of the coming years. 
But let me hasten on. No words of mine can 
tell, and no words of mine are needed to tell, the 
blessedness that belongs to that one dear spot 
called home. Oh, doubly dear it may be to those 
who have it not, but only remember its blessed- 
ness ; and dearest of all it may be to those who 
look forward to the renewal and the fulfilment of 
its joy in heaven ! 



SERMON VIII. 



MY NEIGHBOR. 



If ye fulfil the royal law according to the scripture, Thou 
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, ye do well : But if ye have 
respect to persons, ye commit sin, and are convinced of the law as 
transgressors. — St. James ii. S, 9. 



'HE good old word " neighbour " has a mean- 



ly ing of its own that is peculiar to our Eng- 
lish speech. Like the word u home," it enshrines 
a tradition and stands for a history. It has there- 
fore a monumental interest which entitles it to 
attentive study. It means, as you know, one 
who, because he lives in a near dwelling or home, 
is specially related to us ; and upon the relation 
which it signifies there have been builded more 
than one of the institutions of Anglo-Saxon civil 
society. From its earliest times among that people 
the bond between neighbors was so definite and 
intimate that in the eye of the law one neighbor 
was held to be responsible for the security and 
well-being of another. If a man was murdered, 
the neighbors were in the first instance accounted 
responsible ; and it was only when they had purged 
themselves by finding and convicting the real mur- 
derer, that they were held to be acquitted of their 

1 Preached in Christ Church, Detroit, on the morning of the 
Third Sunday in Advent, 1SS5. 




1 7 6 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



responsibility. So also in case of dispute or dis- 
agreement between any two neighbors, twelve or 
more of the other neighbors were summoned as an 
assize to determine the matter. There is no doubt 
that it was upon this ancient custom that our great 
institution of trial by jury was founded; and it is 
upon the same custom, the same ancient and 
sacred bond of neighborhood, that what may be 
called the very corner-stone of our public liberty 
rests, — that is, the right and the duty of local self- 
government in all matters not expressly delegated 
to the national power. If time permitted and 
occasion required, it might be shown that in mak- 
ing much of this relation of neighborhood, instead 
of the tribal relation of kindred or clanship on the 
one hand, and of association of trades or industrial 
classes on the other, our English civilization early 
emerged out of the merely tribal state which has 
generally distinguished Keltic people, and from 
the first made its protest against all kinds of 
socialism and its kindred imperialism ; and that 
from the first it formed the unit of civil society 
in the home, and recognized only those civil 
bonds that bind the family to those which stand 
around it as neighbors. Suffice it to say that the 
result has been the building up of a civilization 
unique in the world's history, — a civilization in 
which the liberty of the individual is preserved 
entire because it is defined on every side by the 
same limitations of neighborliness that limit and 
support every other man ; that therefore the Eng- 
lish-speaking people of the world have always 



MY NEIGHBOR* 



*77 



been at once loyal and free, because loyalty has 
begun at the fireside and has spread thence from 
neighbor to neighbor till all the nation has been 
bound together in one bond; and that because 
this bond has been produced from within instead 
of being imposed from without, it leaves manhood 
unimpaired and unfettered by law, and freedom 
but another name for duty. And when upon this 
natural relation the vitalizing influence of Chris- 
tianity was brought to bear, the result has been 
the formation of that peculiar institution among 
English-speaking peoples, and especially in our 
own land, which is called by the name of society. 

If, however, we go back of these considerations 
to first principles, we find that the enactment on 
which all human society rests is the royal law 
given by God himself and re-enacted by his 
Son: " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with 
all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all 
thy mind. This is the first and great command- 
ment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt 
love thy neighbor as thyself." This, added to that 
unwritten law of man's nature called the societatis 
appetitus, is itself the enactment of that social econ- 
omy which after all these years and in this land of 
ours is destined to attain, we believe, to its fairest 
fulfilment in Christian society. There is a singular 
expression of this royal law as first given by 
Moses, then re-enacted by Jesus, and finally as 
expounded by Saint James, which is very signifi- 
cant. In Leviticus, the Hebrew word which is 
translated neighbor means companion, friend, as- 

12 



i;8 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



sociate, equal. When Jesus re-enacted it, and His 
words were translated into the Greek language, the 
word which is given as neighbor means much the 
same as our English word, — that is, a near dweller. 
And this larger meaning of the word and of the 
command Saint James further expounds and en- 
forces when he says, " If ye fulfil the royal law 
according to the Scripture, Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor as thyself, ye do well : But if ye have 
respect to persons, ye commit sin, and are con- 
vinced of the law as transgressors." Now, then, 
taking this royal law as thus expounded, let us 
see how it enacts the establishment and requires 
the perfection of that peculiar Christian economy 
which we call society. 

That man should enter into some kind of social 
relation with those about him, is indeed a neces- 
sity of his nature. For he is a social being, and it 
is only in the mutual amenities and exchange of 
social intercourse that his happiness finds its com- 
pleteness. The issue of this natural impulse, un- 
guided by religion, may be registered in friend- 
ship, — an attachment to friends accompanied by 
hatred to enemies. Among all heathen people 
and all barbarous tribes there has been, there- 
fore, no lack of friendship, just as there has been 
no lack of savage hate, and the one has usually 
been commensurate with the other. There is no 
time now to consider the inadequacy of this natu- 
ral impulse alone to hold society together. Beau- 
tiful and gracious as natural friendship is, it is too 
limited in its extent, too dependent on the pecu- 



MY NEIGHBOR. 



179 



liarities of individuals, too frail and uncertain in 
its tenure, to constitute a basis sufficiently broad 
and enduring on which society may securely rest. 
There must be a larger, nobler principle which 
shall take this impulse and extend its action far 
beyond its natural limits. And this is to be found 
in that royal law enacted by God and re-enacted by 
Christ : " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with 
all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all 
thy mind. This is the first and great command- 
ment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt 
love thy neighbor as thyself." 

You will observe, then, that love to one's neigh- 
bor is here likened to love to God. This discloses 
the great truth that is founded on it, and is meas- 
ured by it Let us try, then, to get at the prin- 
ciple on which love to God must rest, and this 
will be the principle of love to our neighbor. 
Why, then, should we love God with heart and 
mind and soul and strength? It is because in 
God man finds the ideals which are the proto- 
types of all that is noble in himself, and which 
therefore he must love if he would be true to his 
own better nature and higher destiny. It is in 
the fact that man was made in God's image that 
we find his supreme obligation to love God. It is 
impossible for him not to love such an ideal with- 
out turning from his true destiny, renouncing his 
eternal birthright, abjuring his glorious mission. 
For man not to love God with all his heart and 
soul and mind is degradation. For man, whose 
heart was formed for love, not to love the great 



i8o 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



heart of the Everlasting Love; for man, whose 
soul was fashioned in God's image and bidden 
to aspire to His likeness, not to adore the great 
Soul of all things ; for man, whose mind is the 
faint reflection of the Divine Mind, not to worship 
the Eternal Majesty, to whose thought all things 
are present, — is to be something less or other than 
a man. It was therefore but the statement of our 
everlasting truth when Christ said, To do this is the 
first and great commandment. But immediately 
he adds, The second is like unto it, and that the 
two together fill up the whole range of human 
duty. " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." 
Now, then, it is in the likeness of the second com- 
mandment to the first that its supreme obligation 
lies ; and this we must consider for a moment, for 
it is the basis of all Christian society. 

The obligation of man to love his neighbor as 
himself lies in the fact that it is in his neighbor 
that man gets his clearest revelation of God, — 
more clear than any revelation in words, more 
clear than any revelation in works. It is in the 
soul of man when looked at with the eyes of 
neighborliness that man gets his best vision of 
the majesty and beauty of God. Spite of all the 
defilements of sin, spite of all the disfigurements 
of selfishness and worldliness, it is in man's regal 
nature of heart, soul, and mind that we catch our 
best vision of God. When we begin to look at it 
in this way, we see that loving men is a religious 
thing. It is a religious thing so to love men as 
to delight to meet them and mingle with them in 



MY NEIGHBOR. 



181 



society. To be able to look with open vision on 
Nature's grand and lovely forms, and to see and 
love the ideal beyond or behind them, is esteemed 
a precious gift. So also to find a joy in the flow- 
ers, a delight in the morning, a pensive ecstasy in 
the light of setting suns ; to feel with the poet, — 

" There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, 
There is a rapture on the lonely shore, 
There is society, where none intrudes, 
By the deep sea, and music in its roar." 

But far above this gift is the precious, the divine 
gift of loving men and taking delight in their com- 
pany. To love men as men, not for what they 
have nor for what they think or know, but to love 
them because they are made in God's image, and 
because in them man gets his only open vision of 
the great archetypal mind, soul, heart, — thought, 
goodness, love, — oh, this is one of the grand 
things for man to do ! Next to loving God, it is 
the grandest thing for a man to do; and the su- 
preme obligation to do this is the basis of all 
Christian society. 

Now, then, in the light of these considerations 
let us think for a few moments — first, of the dig- 
nity and discipline of society ; then of the edu- 
cational influence of society; then of the dangers 
that beset society; and finally of the blessedness 
of true Christian society. 

And first, of the dignity and discipline that be- 
long to it. If we take society now as we know it, 
the social intercourse of Christian men and women 
under well-known rules of politeness and good 



182 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 



manners, we find that it has a dignity of its own 
that entitles it to be considered one of the loftiest 
results of Christian civilization. Society in this 
sense is peculiar to the Christian nations. The 
heathen have not and never had anything like it. 
At this moment there is nothing to correspond to 
it in China or Japan, in Turkey or Egypt, or in any 
non-Christian land, just as there was nothing like 
it in imperial Rome, or cultured Athens, or learned 
Alexandria. And even among Christian peoples 
it has been of comparatively recent development. 
It existed only in the most rudimentary form in 
the early centuries of our era, and in the Middle 
Ages. Chivalry was only a splendid prophecy of 
what it was to be, but nothing more. It was not 
till comparatively recent times that the great com- 
monwealth of men and women which we now call 
society was organized in the civilized world ; and 
even now it is only among the English-speaking 
peoples and their congeners that it has attained a 
free development. Among the Latin and Gaulish 
races, for instance, there is such distrust of women, 
and such jealous restrictions are placed upon her, 
that the free intercourse of polite society in our 
sense of the word is impossible. Finally, it may 
be said that of all the English-speaking peoples, 
society has attained or may attain among us its 
noblest form ; because here we are free from the 
degenerating effect of a merely hereditary and 
titled aristocracy. Society, in a word, is here left 
free to rest on that great enactment which God 
has made, which is binding on all alike, and which 



MY NEIGHBOR. 



183 



urges man by the loftiest sanction known to mind 
or heart to love his neighbor. Hence, we have 
the great commonwealth of Christian society, — a 
commonwealth which has its own gentle and gra- 
cious laws ; its silent tribunals which noiselessly 
but unerringly enforce them ; its dignities, its hon- 
ors, its joys, its labors, its duties, its delights, the 
movements of which constitute the characteristic 
economy of modern civilized life. 

Xow, the discipline of it will be apparent when 
it is considered that the one principle which regu- 
lates it throughout is self-sacrifice. It is a great 
truth that the principle of the cross underlies all 
good manners. Self-denial, self-control, self-sacri- 
fice; the very essence of Christianity, are actually 
put into practice in the behavior of good society. 
Men must restrain their baser impulses and in- 
stincts. Selfishness, if it exist at all, must at least 
be dissembled or concealed. Self-assertion must 
be abandoned. No man can even seem to be a 
gentleman who does not put into practice those 
principles of the cross of Christ which the gospel 
commends to us ; and no man can really be a gen- 
tleman unless he have those principles in his heart. 
Therefore it may be said that Jesus was the first 
gentleman in all the world after Adam fell; and 
still the only way to become a real gentleman is 
to take Jesus for a model. The discipline of polite 
society, therefore, is of much importance in the 
culture of the Christian life, since it is the actual 
putting into practice of its principles, which like 
all principles cannot be fully appropriated until 



THE DIGNITY OF MAX. 



we use them. Therefore it is that the Christian 
man who moves among his fellow-men in social 
intercourse is so much nobler, grander a man than 
the recluse, the hermit, the monk, the dweller in 
a cloister. The solitary man or woman is almost 
sure to be self-willed, self-centred, lacking in the 
finished grace of the Christian life. The monas- 
tery, the nunnery, the cloister, the hermitage, are 
not favorable to the development of the highest 
Christian character. The best field for the exercise 
of the Christian virtues, next to the Christian home, 
is to be found in the walks, the employments, 
the innocent pleasures, the gracious and generous 
courtesies that belong to Christian society. 

These considerations leave but little to be said 
of the educational influence of society. As I have 
already intimated, we learn in social intercourse 
some divine things that we could not otherwise 
learn. Nay, we look upon the Divine in the hu- 
man, and through the human we learn to love the 
Divine. " If any man love not his brother whom 
he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath 
not seen?" What a book is the mind of man! 
What a mystery is the human heart ! In Christian 
society we study the deepest mysteries of the hu- 
man soul, we may bend over the fairest pages of 
human thought. To see Christian men and women 
at their best; to turn toward them the best side of 
our nature ; to abjure pride ; to banish self-seeking 
and selfishness ; to follow, if only for an hour, lofty 
ideals; to enjoy the bright flashes of wit, the sus- 
tained delight of high converse ; to think not of 



MY NEIGHBOR. 



I8 5 



self, but of others, and to lose one's self in gracious 
ministry to others, — this of itself ought to be an 
educating, elevating, ennobling employment, which 
would train man for ideal pursuits both here and 
hereafter. Ought to be, will be, provided society 
be kept pure, simple, high-minded, in all respects 
what it ought to be. 

And this brings me to my next topic, — the 
dangers which beset society. Here again I must 
be very brief. Time does not permit me even to 
enumerate more than three of them. These three 
shall be, selfishness, worldliness, unreality. And 
first, of selfishness. Enough has been already 
said to show that selfishness is really incompati- 
ble with all good manners, and is therefore the 
foe to all society. But there is a more subtle 
selfishness, which, while it does not express itself 
in unmannerliness, is nevertheless just as really 
unmannerly. I mean the selfishness which is al- 
ways seeking its own good, its own advancement, 
its own advantage, in, through, or by means of 
society. Surely I need not characterize this base, 
sordid, ignoble temper or disposition which so 
abounds in the world, among the poor just as 
much as among the rich. This it is which so 
often makes society a mere vulgar competition, 
hospitality a mere sham and bargain, like the pub- 
licans giving merely to receive as much again. 
Akin to this danger, and no less base and sordid, 
is the frivolous or calculating worldliness which 
makes society a mere means of vulgar and pre- 
tentious display, — a display which excludes the 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



poor, which alienates classes, which works ruin 
to many a household, and which, like a dry-rot 
soon makes the society where it prevails a mere 
sham. 

This brings me to the mention of the last dan- 
ger, unreality. In society it is so easy to be unreal ; 
to pretend to feel more than one does feel ; to seem 
glad when one is not glad, and sorry when one is 
not sorry; to say smooth and false things, because 
smooth and false things are so easy to be said. 
What is the remedy? I answer, a return to the 
great first principle on which society is founded, — 
love to one's neighbor because he is a neighbor, 
the man whom God has given to you to care for ; 
who, because his home is near you, you are related 
to him ; who, because he is a man, a regal creature, 
made in God's image, in whose nature you can see 
some vision of God, him, therefore, ye ought to 
love. Oh, to love one's neighbor, not for what he 
has, not for what he thinks or knows, not for what 
one may gain by it, but to love him because he is 
a child of God, — this is the royal law, the keeping 
of which is to be royal, to do well ! Oh, if our 
men and women could only rise up to the height 
of this great argument, then indeed would society 
be purged of all its meanness and frivolity, and 
guarded from the manifold dangers which beset 
it! Society would simply be Christianity in its 
holiday attire, — none the less pious, none the less 
faithful, because joyous and glad. " Therefore, love 
is the fulfilling of the law." If there be any other 
commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this 



MY NEIGHB OR. I 8 / 

saying, namely, " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
thyself." 

More than two thousand years ago there lived 
a sage in a far Eastern land. The people of his 
nation were rude and barbarous ; the days in which 
his lot was cast were very evil. The great thought 
rose up in his heart that he would redeem the time 
and save his people. But he knew not God. He 
only knew man, or as much of man as one who 
is without the thought of God can know. So he 
took the half-truth which he did know, and upon 
it he constructed his great philosophy. He made 
religion to consist altogether of good manners ; and 
to this day one third of the human race venerate 
the sage Confucius and accept his philosophy. 
Let us not deride the great Chinese philosopher. 
He was not altogether wrong. He was partly 
right. The only secret of his error was that he 
did not know God, and hence he could not base 
his noble precept of love to man on the only secure 
foundation on which it can rest, and that is love to 
God. Five hundred years later a greater than Con- 
fucius arose, — one who out of the richer treasures 
of His thought brought forth all wisdom and all 
knowledge. He supplied what Confucius lacked, 
and in likening love of man to love of God, He dis- 
closed the twofold principle of all religion and all 
society. His familiars and His apostles understood 
Him. They learned the mighty secret of all reli- 
gious, of all social, of all political development, as 
they sat at His feet. Ages passed on, — ages of bar- 
barism, cruelty, wrong. Slowly, surely, the great 



1 88 THE DIGNITY OF MAN 

principles which he enunciated have won their way. 
At last they are finding in this age, in this land, as 
I believe, a fuller, richer development than ever be- 
fore. We see, with all the faults and shortcomings 
of our time, that there are men and women who do 
love God, — and oh, how that love ennobles them ! 
— and do love men because they love God. This 
love of man is now organized into a great economy; 
but many are using it mistakenly, selfishly, falsely. 
The question, then, constantly arises, What is the 
principle on which this new economy of social in- 
tercourse ought to rest? I turn for an answer to 
the words of the great Master. I read the exposi- 
tion of that answer by the apostle James, who sat 
at His feet, and who calls it the royal law. And 
then for the definition of that sufficing, supreme 
love to God and man which is the code at once 
of all religion and all society, I turn to the writ- 
ings of the great apostle. Thou shalt love God, 
and therefore thy neighbor, said Jesus. And Paul 
the apostle expounds that love. Listen to it. Here 
is at once the code both of religion and good 
manners. " Though I speak," he says, " with the 
tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, 
I am become sounding brass, or a clanging cym- 
bal." This, then, is the principle which makes a 
man at once a gentleman and a Christian ; this 
is the royal law: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
God ; . . . thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy- 
self." 



SERMON IX. 



BUSINESS. 1 



And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, 
and to work with your own hands as we commanded you ; That 
ye may walk honestly toward them that are without, and that ye 
may have lack of nothing. — I Thess. iv. n, 12. 

T^HERE is a word which has come to mean 



-L much in our daily speech, — whose meaning 
as we use it cannot be expressed by any single word 
in any other language, — and that word is " busi- 
ness.''' Like " home " and " neighbor," it enshrines 
a tradition and stands for a history. There is not 
time now to follow the development of the word and 
its signification, until, as at present, it means a 
vast department of human activity, in which all 
the movements of labor and commerce are in- 
cluded. It now stands for a far-reaching estate, 
which, though it cannot be claimed that the Anglo- 
Saxon race created it, has undoubtedly been or- 
ganized by English-speaking peoples, who have 
made it the controlling power in the modern po- 
litical world. The old sneer that the English are 
a nation of shopkeepers has lost its point, though 
not its truth. More than all other secular agen- 

1 Preached in Christ Church, Detroit, on the morning of the 
fourth Sunday in Advent, 1S85. 




THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



cies, the business enterprise of the English-speak- 
ing races has blessed the human race. It has led 
the van in the triumphal progress of Christian 
civilization. It has opened up continents, peopled 
deserts, and whitened solitary seas with the sails 
of commerce. Therefore the old English word 
" business " has come to have a definite and noble 
meaning. It stands for a mighty commonwealth 
wherein men and nations are intimately related to 
each other. It has its own laws, enacted by the 
Supreme Law-giver, which senates and parliaments 
do not need to enact and cannot set aside. It en- 
forces these laws by the swift and unerring awards 
of success or failure. It builds its own capitals 
in many lands on spots designated by God him- 
self, and in them it erects stately palaces which 
far outstrip the pride and magnificence of former 
ages. It has its own leaders, and it sets one up 
and pulls another down according as each obeys 
or disobeys its behests. Kings and cabinets are 
obedient to its commands. Armies are now little 
more than its auxiliaries, the hired mercenaries 
with which it protects its interests. A monarch 
surrounded by Oriental pomp in his Eastern capital 
dares to interfere with the interests of a lumber 
company in Burmah. An English expeditionary 
army sets out from Calcutta, marches to Manda- 
lay, dethrones that mad and foolish king, and sees 
to it that the injured lumber company shall cut 
their logs of teak on the mountains of Burmah in 
security and peace. When Muscovite or Austrian 
ambition marshals its legions, or Moslem fanati- 



BUSINESS. 



191 



cism musters its Asiatic hordes, the business inter- 
ests of Europe and the world call a halt to the 
fierce armies, and insist that peace shall not be 
broken, nor war declared except as they shall dic- 
tate. The success or failure of campaigns, of di- 
plomacy, of statesmanship, is registered instantly, 
in all the world's markets, in the rise or fall of 
prices, in the establishment or impairment of busi- 
ness confidence. And so it has come to pass 
that almost all the practical concerns of the world 
have fallen under the influence of its potent mas- 
tery, and yield to the demands and movements of 
business. 

When we go behind these general considerations, 
however, we find that this great commonwealth 
rests on God's enactment. When He commanded 
man to replenish the earth and subdue it, He is- 
sued His royal charter to business. Business means 
the appropriation and subjection of the world by 
man to himself. Beginning with agriculture, which 
is its simplest form, and rising through all grades 
of industrial and commercial activity, whatsoever 
subdues the external world to man's will, and 
appropriates its power, its beauty, its usefulness, 
is business ; and whoso worthily engages in it is 
helping to carry out God's design, and is so far 
engaged in His service. To conquer the earth, 
and force the wild fen or stony field to bring forth 
bread to gladden the heart of man ; to level use- 
less hills, and say to obstructive mountains, Be ye 
removed from the path of progress; to summon 
the lightnings to be his messengers, and cause the 



192 



THE DIGNITY OF MAX. 



viewless winds to be his servants; to bring all the 
earth into subjection to human will and human 
intelligence, — this is man's earthly calling, and his- 
tory is but the progressive accomplishment of it. 
Therefore it is, that, rightly regarded, business is 
a department of Christian activity. Therefore it is 
to be said and insisted on, that the worthy busi- 
ness of every-day life is a department of genuine 
Christian culture that ought to be pursued with 
high aims and lofty motives, not only for what it 
enables man to do, but chiefly for what it enables 
man to be in the exercise of his kingly function 
and in the development of his kingly character. 

Let us think, then, for a few moments this morn- 
ing of the disciplinary and educational function of 
business, and of some of the dangers that assail 
those who are engaged in it. The apostle, in 
commending men to faithful diligence in business, 
names two motives which undoubtedly have played 
an important part in controlling and encouraging 
men, — " that ye may walk honestly toward them 
that are without, and that ye may have lack of 
nothing." To supply one's daily need, and to 
make and keep an honorable place in the world, 
may not seem to be very lofty motives ; but they 
are, at least, universal in their operation, and of 
daily urgency. Because men need food and cloth- 
ing and shelter ; because they desire for them- 
selves and their children comfort, security, plenty; 
because the mind craves books and painting and 
music, and all the elegances and delights which 
money can buy; and because the aspiring heart 



BUSINESS. 



193 



craves the respect and admiration of its fellows, — 
these are motives which have sufficed to make 
some men toil in all ages. But in this land, of all 
others, these motives have asserted their power as 
nowhere else, and made our people a nation of 
workers. The intelligent foreigner who comes to 
our shores is struck with the anxious, eager look 
on men's faces. All life is eager, active, few or 
none despairing of rising in the world, and fewer 
still content with the fortune to which they have 
already risen. Everything partakes of this rest- 
less, feverish energy. Agriculture, manufactures, 
very much of professional life even, is possessed 
and dominated by the commercial idea of getting 
on. The vast majority of our people do, with 
more or less assiduity, attend to their own busi- 
ness, desiring to walk honestly, or honorably, to- 
ward them that are without, and to have lack of 
nothing. 

Now, whatever we may think of the motives 
which underlie this fact, the fact itself is far from 
discouraging. At all events, our people are in 
earnest about something. They are delivered for 
the most part from the sottishness of self-indul- 
gence. They have not lost their manhood in the 
slavery of sensuality. Whatever their motives may 
be, they are actually practising daily and hourly 
the Christian virtues of faith or foresight, of pru- 
dence, of self-control, of self-denial, of temperance, 
of uprightness. The characteristic virtues of the 
business world are Christian virtues every one, and 
in adopting them men have acknowledged the 

*3 



194 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 



excellence of Christianity. Self-indulgence is rec- 
ognized as folly, as the foe to all happiness and 
manliness. Self-denial, self-control, is known in 
the practical affairs of life to be the condition of 
all success. Thus far, then, men have learned the 
great lesson of the cross, and have taken its prin- 
ciples to be the rules of business life. Therefore 
it is that if rightly and wisely conducted there is 
no better discipline for the formation of character 
than business. It teaches in its own way the 
peculiar value of regard for others' interests, of 
spotless integrity, of unimpeachable righteousness ; 
and the busy activities of life, in themselves con- 
sidered, are good and not evil. They are a part 
of God's great work, and are as much His ap- 
pointment as the services of praise and prayer. I 
think we all need to be reminded of the dignity 
and sacredness of a worthy every-day life. God's 
kingdom includes more than the services of the 
sanctuary. The court-house is his temple too, 
and so is the chamber of commerce. It is just as 
holy a thing to work as it is to pray ; and the dis- 
tribution of commerce, the helpfulness of trade, 
the feeding and sheltering of those belonging to 
you, and all the honorable ministries in which 
a high-minded business man engages, are just as 
truly a part of God's service, if men could see 
and feel them to be so, as is the function of the 
preacher. I am not here to condemn these things, 
or to deprecate men's earnestness in the pursuit 
of them; but I would deepen and enlarge that 
earnestness. I would say with the apostle, Study 



BUSINESS, 



195 



to do these things faithfully, earnestly; but then 
I add, as he never failed to teach, these things are 
means, not an end. Their value lies not in them- 
selves, but in the discipline, the character, the 
power which they give to do higher things. 

The warning is not needless. And this brings 
me to name one or two of the great dangers that 
beset the man of business. Though beyond all 
question the business energies of the age have 
been reinforced and guided by the Gospel, until 
discipline, temperance, and self-control have be- 
come their permanent characteristics, and though 
beyond all question the business pursuits of the 
age are recognized by Christian thinkers and 
economists as departments of human culture and 
as part of God's administration of the world, 
yet business men, with all their earnestness and 
sagacity, are peculiarly liable to be blind to these 
high considerations and ignorant of this great 
economy. There are two dangers by which they 
are continually liable to be betrayed: one is self- 
ishness, and the other is worldliness. 

Now, it may seem a trite thing to say, and yet 
it is not always taken into account, that a busi- 
ness man is peculiarly liable to a special form of 
selfishness. It is not the selfishness of ease or 
self-indulgence, as we have seen ; but it is the self- 
ishness of gain, of profit, of personal advantage. 
Profit, of course, is the very essence of success 
in business.' It is the measure of success, and 
there could not long continue to be business 
without it. Yet the making of profit is apt to 



196 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



become an absorbing passion with the eager 
business man for its own sake. His ordinary- 
relations with men are apt to be more or less 
controlled by it. He is in danger of carrying it 
into his social life, — of valuing men and policies 
and principles according to the advantage that 
may accrue to him from his connection with them. 
Such a man pretty soon begins to wish to make 
his association pay, and his friendships, and his 
politics, and everything that he is and has and 
does. And if he is successful, a certain selfish 
pride establishes itself in his heart. We all know 
this ignoble type of character. And then dogging 
the heels of this selfish pride comes avarice, — that 
amazing and monstrous passion of the soul which 
loves money for its own sake, which grows on 
what it feeds on, which never can be appeased, 
which never has enough. Woe to the man who 
sinks into this slavery ! And yet how many men 
there are who sink into it almost unaware ! A 
young man begins life strong, temperate, self- 
denying, full of energy and of courage, thinking 
high thoughts, cherishing noble ideals. He goes 
into business. The excitement of it pleases him, 
the success of it fascinates him, the gain of it be- 
gins to cast its spell about him. Now, mark how 
such an one sinks into its toils. First he gives 
up the Sunday school. Then his place in church 
is empty. Then he steals off to his office and 
counting-room on Sunday. Then he gives up 
old friends one by one. He no longer cares for 
society. Men praise him for his energy and 



BUSINESS. 



197 



success. Then he begins to get more and more 
mercenary, but men still praise him ; more and 
more hard, but men still praise him, until the ac- 
cursed thirst for gold becomes the one passion 
his life. Then he does not much care whether 
men praise him or not, and soon he becomes an 
Ishmaelite, — his hand is against every man. To 
say nothing of the hardened and sordid character 
that this gives him, it defeats his career as a busi- 
ness man. The apostle says, " Be diligent in busi- 
ness, that ye may walk honorably toward them 
that are without, and that ye may have lack of 
nothing." This man no longer cares to walk hon- 
orably toward them that are without, and has lack 
of everything. 

But how much wiser, even from his own point 
of view, it is for the man of business to guard 
against this danger and resist it. To say nothing 
of the deliverance of his soul from the bondage 
and degradation of avarice, how much more would 
his very money be worth to him, if he should heed 
and obey the gospel! How 7 much larger his suc- 
cess, how much freer, nobler, more worthy, more 
happy his life ! His success would be larger as 
he went on, and would mean so much more to 
him. For the miser becomes a coward and loses 
heart. His selfishness makes him short-sighted, 
and turns all men against him. But the Christian 
man of business not only succeeds in the exercise 
of the Christian virtues, but success means some- 
thing noble to him. And money is power in the 
hand of a good man, and he gets more good than 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 



he gives, even, in making a right and generous 
use of it. 

But let us thankfully confess that this danger is 
not so rife as it once was. Our modern life is so 
full of demands on the profit of business that there 
are not so many miserly men as there once were. 
But there is another danger that was never so 
prevalent as it is now. This may be called the 
worldiness of business. Men are simply absorbed 
and engrossed and satisfied with their business 
pursuits and business interests, and so neglect 
and forget their religious and eternal interests. I 
here speak of business as a vast department of 
human culture, in which man appropriates what 
is external to himself. If this world were the only 
world and this life the only life, then it might be 
wise and worthy in man to devote himself without 
reserve to the things that belong only to this world 
and this life. But man is more than a denizen of 
this world. He is more than an animal to eat and 
drink and be clothed. He is more than a calcu- 
lating machine to puzzle over life's problems. He 
is more than a mercenary recruit drafted into the 
world's great army to fight its battles of progress. 
His own spirit bears witness to its immortal dig- 
nity and destiny. His heart, which cannot be sat- 
isfied here ; his reason, which soars above the 
things of time and sense ; his conscience, which 
bids him look for an eternal retribution on wrong- 
doing, — his whole nature pleads trumpet-tongued 
against the shame and indignity of mere worldli- 
ness. And yet with strange inconsistency multi- 



BUSINESS. 



199 



tudes of business men make light of the wants of 
their immortal souls, and go their ways engrossed 
by utter worldliness. 

Yes, they go their ways, but their ways are not 
ways of pleasantness, their paths are not paths 
of peace. For there is a hunger of the heart 
which nothing but God can appease ; there is a 
thirst of the soul which nothing but God can sat- 
isfy. " That ye may walk honorably toward them 
that are without"! What can give this, spite of 
poverty or wealth, but the Christian conscience 
which is void of offence toward man and God? 
" That ye may have lack of nothing " ! What 
can assure this but the spirit of adoption, which 
bears witness with our spirit that we are children 
and heirs of God? 

And now, to bring this Advent series of sermons 
to a close, we have seen that Christianity has made 
our homes, our society, our business; and Chris- 
tianity alone can preserve them. In this fair land, 
in the midst of this Anglo-Saxon civilization, these 
institutions have reached, under the influence of 
Anglo-Saxon Christianity, their fairest develop- 
ment. And w^hat a noble discipline they afford, 
what a worthy training they give to fit a man for 
the employments, the dignities, the blessedness of 
eternity ! It is this thought that gives them all 
their real dignity and all their real value. The 
one thought that redeems this world from insig- 
nificance is the thought of another. He only can 
live worthily here who is preparing to live for- 
ever hereafter. Dear then as our country is, we 



200 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 



love it more, the more it grows like the heavenly 
country. Dear as home is, it is dearest of all 
when it is most like our heavenly home. Joy- 
ous and glad as society is, it is most joyous 
and most glad when it grows like the society 
of the redeemed, where there shall be no more 
sin and no more curse. And business is worthy 
of man's immortal energies only when it se- 
cures for him and those whom he loves the true 
riches. Men and brethren, to guard our country, 
to hallow our homes, to purify and elevate society, 
to ennoble business life and make it more worthy, 
this is the function of Christianity, — the sober, 
ethical, practical, home-building, society-fostering, 
business-encouraging Christianity of this beloved 
Church, which directly or indirectly has been the 
source of all that is best in our civilization, which 
will lead us on, I do not doubt, to still more glo- 
rious things in the future, but only on condition 
that it continue, and even in larger measure, to en- 
noble our business, to purify and elevate our so- 
ciety, to hallow our homes. And this it can do for 
us and our children only as it ennobles, purifies, 
hallows our hearts and our lives. 



SERMON X. 



REPENTANCE. 



From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent : 
for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. — St. Matt. iv. 17. 



HE young Prophet of Nazareth had but lately 



X emerged from obscurity. His human soul, 
we may reverently believe, had but recently appro- 
priated fully the consciousness of His Messianic 
character. On the banks of the Jordan He had 
been saluted as the Christ in the midst of thousands 
of His countrymen, and he had been owned and 
blessed by His Father's voice out of heaven. Rapt 
away by the Spirit into the wilderness, He had 
meditated His great career amid the silences of 
Judea's lonely hill-country, and had won His three- 
fold victory over the tempter. And now in the 
meek majesty of His Messiahship, and with heaven 
and its ministering angels around Him, He returned 
in the power of the Spirit into Galilee, and began 
to preach His gospel. And this was the message 
which He uttered : " Repent : for the kingdom of 
heaven is at hand." 

We would naturally suppose that the first re- 
corded word of Jesus' preaching would mean much. 

1 Preached in St. Paul's Church, Detroit, on the morning of the 
first Sunday in Advent, 1886. 




202 



THE DIGNITY OF MAX. 



All the circumstances that preceded its utterance, 
and all the characteristics of the preacher, would 
lead us to believe that in this living word His pent- 
up soul had found free deliverance. It was the 
beginning of a matchless career in the annals of 
prophetic eloquence. Here for the first time the 
unrivalled orator, who spake as never man spake, 
opened the lips that were full of grace and truth. 
A new era in the history of souls had arrived, when 
the night of old oppression and hoary wrong was 
to be succeeded by the morning of gladness and 
peace. And He whose coming was the ushering 
in of the age of gold, stood forth and spoke with 
golden mouth His first word, — a mighty, wonder- 
working, age-transforming, world-awakening word. 
For when we come to examine it, we find that all 
our expectations concerning it are more than real- 
ized. It was, indeed, the mightiest word that even 
Jesus ever uttered, and still it resounds through 
the world like the peal of a trumpet, seraph blown, 
calling men in this solemn Advent season to new- 
ness of life. By a singular infelicity this first word 
of Jesus has been completely mistranslated in our 
English Bibles. Because of certain tendencies, 
philological, theological, ecclesiastical, which there 
is not time now to specify, the meaning of Jesus 
has been forced into a Latin derivative word which 
is far too narrow to contain it. Suffice it to say 
that the Greek word which we translate " re- 
pent " means far more than that term can possibly 
convey. It means, be changed in your mind ; 
awake to a new sense and a new apprehension of 



REPENTANCE. 



203 



things; take on a change of mind in thought, in 
will, in heart. 

This conclusion of verbal exegesis, in which all 
Biblical scholars are now agreed, is confirmed and 
illustrated by the context. The reason which 
Jesus gave why men should awake and be trans- 
formed in their minds is this, " The kingdom of 
heaven is at hand." The conjunction of ideas here 
is very remarkable. Manifestly something more 
or quite other than the penitence of mere terror is 
here enjoined. The nearness of the kingdom of 
heaven, which Jesus announced, was not a matter 
of dread, but of rejoicing. It was the advent not of 
wrath, but of mercy; the coming not of war, but 
of peace. The heaven to which he pointed was 
no Olympian realm of warring and blood-stained 
deities, but the reign of the righteous and pitiful 
Father, the holy and loving Lord ; and therefore 
His first word was not one of rebuke, but of as- 
piration, — Awake, be changed in your minds; 
" for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." It w T ould 
have been easy for our Lord to have made His first 
appeal to men on other grounds. He might have 
begun by directing their attention first of all to the 
wretchedness and guilt of the lower life. Instead 
of pointing, in the first instance, to the nearness 
and blessedness of heaven's kingdom, He might 
have pointed to the actual w T oes of the devil's 
kingdom, in which the whole world was lying in 
wickedness. He had but to look around Him for 
the ghastly sanctions of such an argument. Sin, 
like a stalking pestilence, had wrought universal 



204 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



desolation. Everywhere " indignation and wrath, 
tribulation and anguish," were visited on the souls 
and bodies of men, for all had done evil. The vast 
unnumbered mass of men were groping in hideous 
darkness. For the millions who tilled the fields, 
and reared the monuments, and made the roads, 
and did the world's toil, and fought the world's 
battles, life was but a season of dumb and inarticu- 
late woe, ended by the rayless, hopeless night of 
death. Even more pitiful was the case of those 
who lorded it over the ignotum valgus ; for, pursu- 
ing pleasure, they found only weariness, and, hungry 
for joy, a fruitless longing consumed their hearts. 
Then, as ever, the so-called gladness of selfish 
worldliness was but a hollow mockery, and all the 
trappings of worldly pride were but the livery of 
despair. With what startling emphasis, then, the 
young Nazarine might have pointed to the Gentile 
world dying in slow agony before their eyes, and 
have said, " Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise 
perish." 

He might have said this as His first word ; but 
He did not. He rather pointed men, in the first 
place, to something better. His w r ay of moving 
men to forsake the woes of sin was by pointing 
them to the beatitude of holiness. Be changed in 
your minds ; take on a new mind ; " for the king- 
dom of heaven is at hand." And, oh, friends, this 
has ever been the Divine way. Whenever God 
calls men to repentance, He begins by awaking the 
mind to nobler thoughts, by kindling better aspira- 
tions in the heart. The prodigal comes to himself 



REPENTANCE. 



205 



and remembers. It is the memory of something 
better, even the Father's house, that reveals his 
present wretchedness. It is the Master's gracious 
bounty in filling Peter's net that moves him to 
confess his sinfulness. It is light from heaven 
that arrests Saul's mad career as he journeys to 
Damascus, and a voice speaks to him with Divine 
tenderness out of the excellent glory. So every- 
where men are best moved to true repentance by 
the sense of the gracious nearness of the kingdom 
of heaven. 

Now, then, having cleared the way, let us study 
a little more closely the nature of that mighty 
movement of the soul which in our English Bibles 
is called repentance. Among divines it is consid- 
ered as consisting of three processes, — illumina- 
tion, contrition, emancipation or enfranchisement. 
Let us think of these for a few moments in their 
order. And first, repentance is the illumination, 
the enlightenment, the awakening of the soul to 
the reality and nearness of the kingdom of heaven. 
Adopting for our present purpose the terminology 
of the text, there are two kingdoms apprehensible 
by man in this state of existence, — one we will call 
the kingdom of the world, the other the kingdom 
of heaven. The two kingdoms are not distant one 
from the other; no walls divide them, no sentinels 
pace their boundaries. There is much that is 
common to both, however different the estimate or 
value that is set upon it. The same fair earth, with 
its trees, its rivers, its hills ; the same holy dawns 1 
and solemn sunsets ; the same sun and moon and 



206 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



stars and revolving seasons; in large degree, the 
same human interests and pursuits, the same ten- 
dernesses and affections of the human heart. And 
yet so diverse are these two kingdoms, that it is 
altogether possible, nay it is easy for a man to 
know almost everything about one of them, and to 
be absolutely ignorant, insensible, unconscious of 
the other. Let me try now to make this plain. 
You all know what I mean by the kingdom of this 
world. Let us call no hard names, but let us take 
it at its best. Let us take a man of the world, not 
a reprobate or an outcast, but a man of intelligence 
and refinement, one of the best of his class. He 
looks out on this world with acute and intelligent 
observation. He engages heartily and prosper- 
ously in its pursuits. He takes a thoughtful inter- 
est in its manifold activities. He is a merchant, 
and he studies the laws of trade ; he is a lawyer, 
and he masters the science of jurisprudence; he 
is a politician, and he knows how to touch the 
springs of human action ; he is a statesman, and 
he understands the laws of national honor and 
greatness. Nay, he is a student, a scholar, an 
adept in the love of science. Art is his pastime ; 
the book of Nature engages his serious thought. 
He can weigh the planets, number the stars, ap- 
point a rendezvous for the wandering comets ; he 
can tell you how mountains , waste and grow, and 
how continents sink and rise ; he knows much 
about the philosophies and economies of life ; he 
will tell you that sin is foolish when it is vulgar 
and does harm ; that selfishness is evil when it is 



REPENTANCE. 



207 



coarse and unrestrained ; that passion is hurtful 
unless it be carefully bridled ; that temperance is 
the handmaid of pleasure ; that moderation is the 
secret of real enjoyment. Nay, he is so wise, so 
prudent, so gracious, that he is fitly called a man 
of the world because he so thoroughly understands 
the world and its life. 

Is there anything, now, that this man does not 
know, or is not in the way of knowing? Yes, 
much. There is a whole world, a kingdom all 
around him, of which he is absolutely uncon- 
scious. Perhaps he once knew it, but the knowl- 
edge of it has vanished from him somehow. As 
a child, he lived in it; for, as the poet well says : 

" Heaven lies about us in our infancy ! 
Shades of the prison-house begin to close 

Upon the growing boy, 
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, 

He sees it in his joy ; 
The youth, who daily farther from the east 
Must travel, still is Nature's priest, 

And by the vision splendid 

Is on his way attended; 
At length the man perceives it die away, 
And fade into the light of common day." 

So, I repeat, the unbelieving man of the world 
becomes unconscious of the kingdom of heaven. 
Though men tell him about it, he does not take it 
in at all. It is all an unreality to him. In vain 
you tell him that the kingdom of heaven is the 
real world in which all spiritual greatness and 
blessedness are, — it is a phantom to him ; that 



208 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



its sovereign is the good and gentle God, — He 
does not acknowledge Him ; that it has its own 
code, — he refuses to study it ; that it has its own 
culture, called worship, — it is foolishness or weari- 
ness to him ; that it has a whole set of motives 
and aspirations which in all lands have been the 
inspiration of all that is best in human history, — 
he answers with a smile of incredulity or a sneer 
of contempt when you talk thus to him. In a 
single word, here is God's great kingdom, even 
the kingdom of heaven, at hand, and he is blind 
to it, seeing, with all his intelligence, only what a 
brute of equal intelligence could see, and loving 
only what a brute of equal taste could love. 

But suddenly and gradually a light breaks in 
upon his vision. In a whisper or in a trumpet 
peal the mighty word steals or resounds through 
the chambers of his soul : Awake, take on a new 
mind ! There is a kingdom of heaven, and it is at 
hand. Who can tell what the occasion may be 
when this living, wonder-working word may arouse 
him? It may be at some pentecostal outpour- 
ing, or in some moment of lonely dejection. It 
may be in the midst of some worshipping throng, 
or when, in the night's still watches, the jaded or 
disappointed heart sobs its longing and unrest. It 
may come like the wail of a lost hope or the 
memory of a mother's prayer. At all events, the 
ear does catch the mighty word ; and suddenly or 
gradually he does become conscious that the king- 
dom of heaven is at hand, — a kingdom not of this 
world, and yet embracing this world ; a kingdom 



REPENTANCE. 



209 



of righteousness but of love, of holiness and there- 
fore of peace; a kingdom whose king is the all- 
loving Father of men ; a kingdom whose strange 
unearthly code reads in this wise : " Blessed are the 
meek, blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are 
the merciful, blessed are the peacemakers, blessed 
are the pure in heart," — where they that mourn 
are comforted, where they that are maligned and 
evil-entreated are sustained, where the hunger and 
thirst of heart are satisfied ; a kingdom whose 
symbol of the cross, once so despised, is now sure 
to represent the very principle of all real wisdom 
and all real power, even the wisdom and power of 
God. Illumined by this knowledge, he begins to 
see all things in a different light. Transformed by 
this vision, his mind begins to take new views of 
the world and of life. Suddenly and gradually the 
mighty word arouses him at last. He sees, he 
feels, he knows that the kingdom of heaven is at 
hand. 

The next process is known as contrition, the sor- 
row of an awakened soul at the sense of its exile 
and degradation. Not a base terror, not a sordid 
dread, but the noble sorrow of one who mourns 
because he has been and is unworthy of his true 
lineage. Oh, it is the homesickness of the soul, 
the upbraiding memory, which visits the prodigal's 
hungry and forsaken heart! And then suddenly 
or gradually more and more of the wonders of 
that heavenly kingdom are disclosed by the re- 
vealings of the Spirit For the prodigal then is 
welcome, for sin there is healing, for guilt there 

14 



210 



THE DIGNITY OF MAX. 



is atonement, for restlessness there is peace. And 
so finally, the awakened, contrite soul turns away 
from the base servitude of the world, and girds up 
its loins to go and claim its heavenly inheritance. 
It renounces the base bondage in which it has 
hitherto been held, and acknowledges its allegiance 
to the kingdom of heaven. 

My brethren, need I remind you that this great 
business of repentance is one in which man does 
not act alone? The illuminating, sin-convincing, 
energizing power is a power from on high, even 
the Spirit of God. Nevertheless, because man 
may resist or yield to the ever-pleading Spirit, it 
is the soul's achievement also, and it is its no- 
blest act, its most heroic achievement. When 
from the blue skies of Castile and Arragon the 
morning sun kissed the returning sails of the 
storm-tossed Columbus, it illumined the path 
along which the great Genoese mounted to un- 
dying fame ; for he gave a new world to civilized 
man. But far greater the achievement of that 
more heroic soul who through repentance has won 
its way to the new world of God, even the king- 
dom of heaven. When Copernicus read anew the 
movements of the stars, and discovered that earth 
is not the centre, but only one of the starry train 
which move in rhythmic harmony around the 
central sun, his name took its place in the bright 
constellation of the world's sages ; but far more 
sage and wonderful is the discovery which the soul 
makes, through repentance, that man's home and 
centre is not here, but that all his true interests 



REPEXTAXCE. 



211 



move around the Sun of Righteousness. When 
great liberators and emancipators like Washington 
and Lincoln arise, to strike the shackles from the 
slave and bid the bowed millions stand erect and 
free, the world fitly honors them, and holds their 
names in fond and proud remembrance. But far 
greater that more difficult and therefore more he- 
roic emancipation which through repentance lifts 
up the degraded soul, and rescues it from the 
bondage of sin and worldliness, and enables it to 
stand once more erect and firm in God's image in 
the kingdom of heaven. Friends, brothers, when 
one of you shall accomplish this heroic act, the 
world will haply know little and care less about it ; 
but in that hour your name shall be writ in the 
Lamb's book of remembrance, and a new thrill of 
gladness shall roll through all the ranks of those 
who wait and serve ! 



SERMON XI. 



SONS OF GOD. 

But as many as received him, to them gave he power to be- 
come the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name : 
which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of 
the will of man, but of God. — John i. 12, 13. 

IF it were possible for us to read the New Testa- 
ment freshly, and as though it were altogether 
new to us, the thing that would strike us most forci- 
bly, perhaps, would be the remarkable prominence 
that is there given to faith. In all His teaching and 
in all His works our Lord made faith the one in- 
dispensable condition of receiving blessing or help 
from Him; and to it He never failed to respond 
with power. Therefore wherever He went His su- 
preme demand was for faith. As soon as the first 
great word of His preaching had awakened the 
soul, the next mighty word was spoken : Believe. 
"The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is 
at hand : repent ye, and believe the gospel." And 
from that time he made more and more of faith, 
as though it included all things, declaring that it, 
and it alone, was competent to secure and appro- 
priate all the good which He had come to give, — 
healing for the sick, sight for the blind, salvation 

1 Preached in St. Paul's Church, Detroit, on the morning of the 
second Sunday in Advent, 1886. 



SONS OF GOB. 



213 



for the lost, life for the dead. Nay, the power of 
the Infinite was declared to be at its command, and 
all things to be possible to him that believeth. 
Not less wonderful was the virtue which the apos- 
tles and familiars of Jesus ascribed to faith. Ac- 
cording to them it is through faith, and faith only, 
that the soul is pardoned, justified, sanctified, 
saved; and it is declared in many places and in 
many ways, but especially in one passage of un- 
equalled sublimity, that it has been by faith that all 
the world's worthies have achieved greatness and 
won renown; not by might, nor by heroism, nor 
by genius, but by faith they " subdued kingdoms, 
wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped 
the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, 
escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness 
were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned 
to flight the armies of aliens. " And in the passage 
which I have chosen for my text Saint John assigns 
to faith a function more wonderful still, declaring 
that faith in Jesus is the transformation, the divine 
birth of the soul, to which power is given to be the 
son of God. " But as many as received him, to 
them gave he power to become the sons of God, 
even to them that believe on his name ; which were 
born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor 
of the will of man, but of God." 

Upon reflection, however, it is easy to see that 
the prominence which is assigned to faith in the 
New Testament Scriptures is by no means ficti- 
tious or arbitrary, but that it lies in the very nature 
of things. When Jesus chose it as the cardinal 



214 



THE DIGNITY OF MAX. 



virtue of His religion, and promised to it alone His 
power and blessing, He did but illustrate afresh 
His profound and all-comprehending knowledge of 
man and man's capacity for greatness. For faith is 
man's characteristic faculty, by means of which he 
has done all the noble deeds that have adorned 
his history. I use the accepted language of philos- 
ophy when I define it in its generic sense as that 
function or movement of the soul by means of 
which man relies on and confides in the unseen, — 
a function which every man must employ even in 
the commonest affairs of life, without which he 
could not, even for a single day, live a rational ex- 
istence. In other words, man must believe in more 
than he can see; he must confide in more than his 
senses can verify ; he must exercise a trust in the 
unseen, which is a genuine movement of faith, or 
a reasonable life would be simply impossible. It 
is faith in the beneficent constancy of natural law 
which hushes the anxious toiler to sleep when the 
work of the day is done, because he believes that 
with the morrow the sun shall return in his strength 
to gladden the world. And in the morning it is 
faith that sends him forth to his work and his labor 
till the evening, because he believes that in obedi- 
ence to natural law he shall surely reap his reward. 
Faith in truth guides the student. Faith in justice 
inspires the jurist. Faith in life and its healing 
power calls forth the physician's skill and nerves 
the surgeon's hand. Faith discerns the unseen 
beauty and wakes the poet's rapture, or loves the 
ideal grace and kindles the philosophic thought, or 



SONS OF GOD. 



215 



inspires the artist's dream. Faith in man and his 
destiny, even though it be but an earthly destiny, 
guides the statesman's policy or shapes the patriot's 
purpose as he employs the arts of diplomacy or 
hurls his embattled legions against the enemies of 
his country. So in all ages and beneath every 
sky it has been through faith, and only through 
faith, that man has subdued kingdoms and wrought 
righteousness, or done anything worthily and well 
either in the domain of action or the domain of 
thought, in the realm of matter or in the kingdom 
of souls. 

Among the recorded sayings of our Lord there is 
none, perhaps, that is more remarkable than this : 
"All things are possible to him that believeth ; " 
and yet there is no one of his transcendental say- 
ings that admits of a more obvious verification. 
Let us now examine this for a single moment 
in order to understand faith and its power. "All 
things are possible to him that believeth." That is, 
as a man's faith, so is his strength ; as he believes, 
so shall it be done unto him. To begin our illus- 
tration of this on the lowest ground, a man must 
believe in anything in order to use it effectively. 
Lie must believe in himself in order to make the 
most and best of his own powers. He must be- 
lieve in his fellow-men, or he cannot be their guide 
or leader. He must believe in the cause which he 
has in hand, or he cannot conduct it or help it to 
success. And if in addition to this faith in himself, 
his fellow-men, his cause and its future, he is wise 
enough to work along the lines of known law, or 



2l6 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



if, in other words, he has faith in the law which 
operates in the domain of his endeavor, then all 
things within the domain of that law are possible 
to him. When we study history, we find that this 
is the secret of all human success. Successful men 
are men who truly believe in the powers which 
they invoke and employ, and who because they 
believe in them use them wisely. The difference 
between men is not so much a difference of brain 
power as a difference of faith power. Faith is the 
attribute which makes men heroic and masterful. 
Men of faith believe in the power which they in- 
voke, in the agencies which they employ; and 
using them to the utmost, they accomplish results 
which to an unbelieving man are impossible. Faith, 
then, is the wielder of all power. It is the achiever 
of all success, the architect of all fortunes, the win- 
ner of all victories. It rules in the camp, in the 
senate, and in the field, as well as in the house of 
prayer. 

Now, so far as a merely physical or economical 
endeavor goes, the faith which wins success need 
not be Christian faith ; but it must be a faith which, 
whether it acknowledges God or not, does believe 
in and obey the power of God. For instance, take 
any successful scientist, like Professor Tyndall, for 
example. He believes in God's physical forces, and 
he reverently obeys them. Therefore he is able to 
employ them, and so in the domain of physics and 
up to the limit of his faith he wields the physical 
power of God. The secret of his success as a 
physical philosopher is that he profoundly believes 



SONS OF GOD. 



217 



in the Tightness and constancy of physical law ; and 
believing, he obeys and rules, and all things within 
the sphere of its action are possible to him. So it 
comes to pass that faithful engineers and mechanics 
and physicists are mighty men. They have not 
only their own strength, but God's strength too. 
They make the lightnings carry their messages, 
the winds and the rivers turn their wheels and bear 
their burdens. All that the powers which they be- 
lieve in can do, they can do likewise ; for all things 
are possible to him that believeth. 

Now, precisely the same reasoning applies in 
the region of the spiritual. There, too, humble 
faith or trust invokes power and wields power. 
The same temper of mind and heart that makes 
Tyndall great when dealing with material things, 
would, if applied to spiritual things, make him 
great in Christian effort and prayer. If he be- 
lieved in God's spiritual forces as profoundly as he 
does in God's physical forces, he could command 
the angels as he now commands the lightnings, 
and could not only send his voice from Lincoln 
to London, but he could send a prevailing peti- 
tion to the city of God along the golden chain 
of prayer. For prayer is the Christian's quest, 
even as labor is the philosopher's seeking. One 
seeks with lighted torch the mind's delight or the 
body's comfort; the other seeks on bended knee 
some peace or grace for the soul. But in both 
cases it is faith that wins the power and receives 
the blessing. All things are possible then to him 
that believeth, but only as he believeth. The 



218 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



kingdom of heaven is revealed more and more, 
and as it is revealed faith grows ; and as it grows it 
utters its agonizing cry for more growth. " Lord, 
increase our faith," is the conquering prayer that 
wins the conquering faith ; and still it cries out for 
more as it goes on conquering and to conquer. 

Now, then, we are in a position to understand the 
wonderful statement of my text. God's gracious 
and beneficent power has been revealed to men in 
the person and by the work of His eternal Son. 
By faith in that Son, man is able to appropriate 
the kind of power in which he believes, and so to 
become a son of God. Marvellous as this state- 
ment is, it is yet in exact accordance with the 
universal operation of all living faith; for first it 
takes on the likeness, and then it wins the power 
of that in which it believes. It is so in science, 
and it must be so in religion. It is so in the king- 
dom of this world, and it must be so in the king- 
dom of heaven. It is the universal office of faith 
first to transform and then to energize. Therefore 
we may read without wonder that to believe in 
God's Son is to be born of God, and so to win 
power to be a son of God. Add to this the fur- 
ther thought that this lofty faith is faith not merely 
in a principle or a revelation, but in a person ; that 
it is confidence or trust not only in what He re- 
vealed and taught and did, but in Him who, be- 
cause He is the Son of God, is the Revealer, the 
Redeemer, the Saviour; that faith in Him not only 
transforms into His likeness, but fits and enables 
the believer to receive favor and grace from Him, 



soxs of con. 



219 



even His quickening, life-giving spirit; that faith 
in Him, therefore, means pardon, peace, justifica- 
tion, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, — we 
begin to see how true this statement must be, that 
truly to believe in Jesus as the Son of God is to be 
born of God, and to have power to be a son of God. 
And this the text declares is the same as receiving 
him as a personal Saviour, — one who comes to the 
individual soul as its Enlightener, Redeemer, Sa- 
viour. Oh, then, this is the supreme question for 
me to ask myself, Have I this personal faith in the 
Son of God, living faith in Him, — not simply in His 
doctrine, His teaching, His church, His ordinances, 
but faith in Him? When in my weakness or my 
wretchedness He comes to me, do I receive Him? 
Is He my accepted Saviour? Do I put my trust 
in Him? If so, I am born of God; I have power 
to be a son of God. 

Brethren, let me conclude with two thoughts, — 
one of comfort, one of warning. To be a son of 
God, oh, that is the loftiest aspiration of the human 
soul ! Time would fail me to tell how the heathen 
have missed the way to attain to that sonship, and 
how men of the world still miss it. It is a secret 
thought that lies at the root of all ambitions, all 
dynastic combinations, all aristocracies of heredi- 
tary honor and power. But by none of these are 
men able to attain to that divine sonship which 
their souls long for. Royalty grows effete and 
brainless, and often mad. Nobility of birth grows 
corrupt and shameless, as every daily paper tells. 
Pride of intellect is not more effective than pride 



220 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



of purse to keep a man from baseness. There is 
no man but the Christian that can be a son of God. 
But even among nominal Christians how often is 
the way utterly mistaken. Men and women so 
often suppose that it is by doing something that 
they may become sons of God. And so they set 
out in the servile spirit of servants. Oh, how 
anxiously they pray, and give alms, and attend ser- 
vices, and wait on ordinances ; but all in vain ! No 
sense of sonship comes to the anxious soul. Listen, 
brother, sister. It is not by doing, but by believ- 
ing, that you and I can become the sons of God. 
Believe ; only believe ! " As many as receive him, 
to them giveth he power to become the sons of 
God, even to them that believe on his name." 
Let us then go back to this thought, my weary 
brothers and sisters. It is not an easy matter so 
to believe. It means the renouncing of all self- 
trust and self-sufficiency; it means the renouncing 
of sin and worldliness ; it means the simple accept- 
ance of Jesus as the one and all-sufficient Saviour; 
it means a simple, joyful trust in Him. Oh, what 
comfort in the thought, — it is not for what I do, 
or think, or say, but it is because I believe, that I 
am a child of God. 

Then comes the thought of warning. If now I 
am a son of God, I must act as a son, — not in a 
servile spirit, but in a filial spirit. I must do my 
Father's will, and be about my Father's business. 
Not in order that I may be a son, but because I 
am a son, I will do all things that He commands 
me. Here, now, is a test which every one of us can 



SONS OF GOD. 



221 



apply to himself. Do I act, feel, live, like a son? 
Am I about my Father's business, and does my 
soul delight in that business? If not, what is the 
matter? Oh, is it not that something is wrong with 
my faith? Has it not somehow been overborne 
by selfishness, by passion, by worldliness? If so, 
then let the Advent-cry once more awaken our 
souls, " The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of 
heaven is at hand. Repent, and believe the gos- 
pel." And then the gracious promise is still 
ours, — our Saviour comes to us this day, the liv- 
ing Saviour, in the way of His own appointing, 
and as many as receive Him, to them giveth He 
power to become the sons of God ; even to them 
that believe in His name. 



SERMON XII. 



HOPE. 1 

Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet ap- 
pear what we shall be : but we know that, when he shall appear, 
we shall be like him ; for we shall see him as he is. And every 
man that hath this hope in him puriheth himself, even as he is 
pure. — i John iii. 2, 3. 

IT is easy to see that this noble passage is thor- 
oughly characteristic of its inspired author; 
for of all the apostles Saint John was the one who 
had the deepest sense of the dignity and blessed- 
ness of the Christian life. By nature he was an 
enthusiastic, loving, and aspiring man. It was to 
be expected, therefore, that he of all others would 
gain, through grace, the loftiest vision of divine 
truth, and would be at once heavenly-minded and 
tender-hearted, known among his familiars both as 
the son of thunder and the disciple whom Jesus 
loved. It was in strict consistency with this that he 
was the one who leaned his young head on the 
Master's breast at Bethany, and who alone of the 
apostles dared to stand near the Master at the 
last dread scene at Calvary. So it was he who 
dared to see and to tell the wonders that were 
revealed to his eagle gaze in Patmos, and whose 

1 Preached in St. Paul's Church, Detroit, on the morning of the 
third Sunday in Advent, 1SS6. 



HOPE. 



223 



voice breaks with womanly tenderness as he ex- 
claims, " Behold, what manner of love the Father 
hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called 
the sons of God." Once before, in the sublime 
prologue to his Gospel, he had told of the mystery 
and the power of that sonship. So here again 
he takes up the lofty strain, and says, "Beloved, 
now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet 
appear what we shall be : but we know that, when 
he shall appear, we shall be like him ; for we shall 
see him as he is. And every man that hath this 
hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure." 

In this passage there are several topics of the 
greatest interest presented for our consideration, 
such as the dignity of the Christian life, — Divine 
sonship ; the progressive development of that life 
towards its lofty goal, which is likeness to God, of 
which likeness the beatific vision is to be at once 
the proof and the fruition; and finally, the hope 
which sustains and ennobles the Christian on his 
way. " Every man that hath this hope in him 
purifieth himself, even as he is pure." In order 
now to understand the meaning and power of 
this hope, which is my special subject this morn- 
ing, let us first inquire concerning the reality of 
the Divine sonship on which it is predicated, and 
of the movement toward the Divine likeness by 
which it is sustained. Is it anything more than 
a mere figure of speech to say that the Christian 
believer is a son of God? 

There is no need that I should go to-day into 
those profound but luminous speculations of Chris- 



224 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



tian theosophy by which it can be shown, as I 
believe, that man before his fall was an actual and 
recognized and conscious son of God. Suffice it 
to say that creation was but the revealing of a fact, 
and man made in God's image and likeness was 
God's child and representative in this lower world. 
But then came a great apostasy, in which man fell 
away from his high estate, in which man lost both 
the right and sense of sonship, and became a crea- 
ture of time and the world. In this condition, man 
the fallen one would of necessity have been dis- 
owned and forever disinherited of his righteous 
Father, had not redeeming love proposed and ac- 
complished a plan by which God was reconciled to 
man, and man might be restored and reconciled 
to God. In the fulness of time this plan, which 
was always meritoriously present to the Divine 
Mind, was actually accomplished. The everlast- 
ing Son, the Revealer and Saviour, became man, in 
order at once to make atonement and accomplish 
redemption, revealing the reconciled Father to man, 
and showing a way and providing the means by 
which man might regain his lost sonship. The 
fact is that God is now reconciled to all men. So 
far as His act and grace are concerned, all men 
have the right to be sons. But man must appro- 
priate and realize his sonship ; and the means by 
which this is done is faith> — faith in the Son of 
God as the Revealer and Saviour, that heroic act 
of the soul whereby it makes its surrender to God, 
renews its allegiance to Him, receives the Son of 
God, and with Him receives power to be a son. 



HOPE. 



225 



Now, this great transaction is called in Scripture 
the new birth of the soul ; and the phrase is none 
too strong when it is considered what is done. In 
all cases the mighty power which accomplishes it 
is the Holy Spirit. Baptism is its sign, and faith 
is its appropriation whereby the man appropriates 
his sonship and becomes indeed a son of God. 
This sonship, then, is a real sonship. It is no mere 
figure of speech. Xot only does it rest on eternal 
facts which are of the most tremendous dignity 
and significance, but it rests further upon the reali- 
zation and appropriation of that fact by the soul 
itself in a transaction which is real birth into a 
Divine sonship ; so that this is a more real than 
any mere natural sonship, — the spiritual sonship 
of those who are here called the sons of God. 

Time would fail me to speak of its dignity. I 
pass at once to the progressive development of 
this character in the soul, whereby its dignity is 
being constantly enhanced. It has not yet been 
all revealed. " It doth not yet appear what we 
shall be." We are moving toward a consumma- 
tion which has not yet been attained, which is 
likeness to God. Here, now, is another note of the 
reality of the sonship. In human relationships 
the bond between father and son is more and more 
relaxed as time goes on; in this divine relation- 
ship it is just the reverse. The Christian grows 
more and more like the Father, and shall at last be 
altogether like Him, and shall see Him as He is. 
In no respect does Christianity more completely 
illustrate its divineness than in the way in which it 

15 



226 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



saves men and women from the decay and debase- 
ment of age, and makes them grow more and more 
lovely and loving as they grow older. For in the 
natural man the reverse is true. Out of religion 
and out of grace, as men and women grow old 
they grow less fit to be loved and trusted. I know 
nothing in all the world more ghastly than the 
degradation which a godless old age inflicts on 
the dignity and grace of manhood. Well may 
the man and woman of the world dread its ap- 
proach, and seek to conceal its outward handi- 
work. But the true indignity that it works is not 
upon the body, but upon the unbelieving soul. 
One of the terrible things that we learn as we gain 
knowledge of the world is this, — that the older an 
unbelieving man or woman becomes, the less good, 
the less loving, the less kind, the more selfish, the 
more hard, the more cruel, the less worthy, the 
less to be trusted, the less to be loved. What a 
terrible revelation it is ! This of itself ought to 
strike terror to the heart of the man or the woman 
who has not believed. For oh, there is nothing 
more ghastly than a godless old age ! In child- 
hood there is no unbelief : this is the secret of its 
loveliness. In early manhood the effects of un- 
belief are not so apparent and not so desperate. 
At all events, there are impulses that are unselfish 
and generous and kind. But in a godless age 
impulse has perished while selfishness has grown 
apace, and grasping and cruel greed. How dif- 
ferent it is with the Christian, the believing man ! 
Fair as is his youth, yet his manhood and even 



HOPE. 



227 



his age are fairer still. In his case there is growth 
in grace, and gracefulness and graciousness of 
character, in tender-heartedness, loving-kindness, 
and all loveliness of spirit. The marks which age 
sets upon the brow do but lend an added dignity 
to him. Though his eye grow dim, yet it has the 
pensive light of another world. Though the face 
be seamed by thought or saddened by sorrow, yet 
it is refined by a gentler, nobler grace. Though 
the hair fade into whiteness, yet " the hoary head 
is to him a crown of glory, being found in the way 
of righteousness." So does he increase in dignity 
as the years go on, because he grows in love, joy, 
peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, 
meekness, temperance, — in a single w r ord, he 
grows in likeness to God. 

Now, then, the consummation tow r ard which this 
growth of the Christian life is constantly moving is 
complete likeness to God, and the beatific vision ; 
and the hope that this shall be his both sustains 
and purifies him. " Every man that hath this hope 
in him purifies himself, even as he is pure/' Of the 
function of hope in general, as a regulative move- 
ment of the soul, I have not time now to speak. 
Any hope will assuredly energize and quicken the 
life that entertains it. This hope refines and puri- 
fies it as well. And first, because this hope is not 
only before man, but it is above him. In climbing 
toward it, he must leave all meaner things behind 
and beneath him. And this brings us to the great 
thought of the text. The hope of the Christian is 
the one worthy, enduring hope that is capable of 



228 



THE DIGNITY OF MAX. 



lifting man above the earth and leading him to 
Heaven. For all earthly and human ideals are too 
near the man to last him more than a little while. 
Xo sooner does he propose one such to himself, and 
begin to mount toward it, than it begins to lose 
its excellence as he draws nigh to it, and soon it 
has no power to hold his affections. There is 
no imaginable state that he cannot so disenchant 
except heaven, and no model that he cannot un- 
idealize except the Son of God. Therefore every 
mere earthly hope is unworthy to rule a man, and 
if he have no higher, will at last degrade him ; be- 
cause man is greater than any earthly honor he 
can aspire to, and greater than the world that he 
lives in, and greater than all its achievements and 
glories, — yes, greater than anything except God. 
Here, now, is the eternal grandeur of Christ's re- 
ligion. It proposes the only worthy and enduring 
hope to man. It says to you and to me, " If you 
will, you may be godlike, for you are the sons of 
God. And you may be like Him if you will, and 
see Him as he is." Sic itur ad astra : This is the 
way to the stars. And Jesus, our elder brother, 
has gone before, and opened the way for aspiring 
man to follow. Behold they go to Him, out of 
every nation and every land, the leal, the loving, the 
true-hearted, even those who believe on His name. 
One by one they shake off all meaner desires, and 
lay all meaner purposes down, and as they climb 
toward Him along the various paths of suffering 
and of duty, their hearts are filled with a common 
hope, — to be like Him, and see Him as He is. 



HOPE. 



229 



" Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall 
see God." Surely, " every man that hath this 
hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure." 
Oh that the age could learn afresh the beauty, the 
grace, the strength, the blessedness of purity ! Do 
we not need to be reminded of the infinite value 
of this grace which includes all others and meas- 
ures all others? Does not the world about us need 
more than all things else to be taught how precious 
and priceless, how all-comprehending it is? And 
not less needful is it that the world should know 
the great truth that no man can be trusted who 
does not cherish in his heart some high hope, 
some lofty ideal which purifies him and keeps him 
pure. I have tried to tell you this morning what 
the only hope is that is competent to do that; 
what the one ideal is which can lead man's aspir- 
ing soul and keep his wayward heart true. Other 
hopes may last for a little while; for a little time 
some earthly ideal may engage and hold the heart. 
But the one enduring hope, the one hope that sur- 
vives all earthly failure, that transcends all earthly 
success, is the hope of the Christian. The one 
ideal which always summons man to higher and 
higher achievement is the Christian Leader and 
Exemplar, the strong and gentle Son of God. Of 
Him the Psalmist says, " I shall be satisfied when 
I awake with thy likeness." Of Him the apostle 
says, "We shall be like him, and see him as he 
is." Surely we can say, " He that hath that hope 
in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure." 

In the beautiful legends which tell us of Arthur 



230 



THE DIGNITY OF MAX. 



and the Knights of the Round Table, one knight 
is described as the bright and consummate flower 
of chivalry, the brave and spotless Sir Galahad, — 
whose good blade carved the casques of men, 
whose tough lance thrusted sure, whose strength 
was as the strength of ten, because his heart was 
pure. It was no fond tale, no idle fancy; for 
many Sir Galahads have lived since Christ came 
to show men how to be great ; and such are the 
men who have done all the fairest and gentlest 
deeds of human history. And sordid and com- 
monplace as the world seems to have grown, the 
only real leaders of men are the men who like 
Sir Galahad are high-minded and pure-hearted. 
The time was when such rode forth in armor to 
resist the spoilers, and keep the far frontiers of 
Christendom against the heathen invader. Now, 
however, they do the less conspicuous but not 
less glorious part. In every Christian community 
there are pure-hearted Christian men who are 
the real champions of right, the warders of all 
that men cherish and hold dear, — men who are 
kept stainless and pure by the high hope of 
their Christian calling; men whose high-minded- 
ness gives tone to our society, who are the real 
defenders of public safety and domestic peace. 
These are the true defenders of our country, the 
unconscious champions of its homes, — men to 
whose star-eyed vision the Christian's hope has 
risen, and whom by God's grace it has purified 
and is keeping pure. 



SERMON XIII. 



SELF-SACRIFICE. 1 



Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down 
his life for us : and we ought to lay down our lives for the breth- 
ren. — i John iii. 16. 



HAT man should love God with all his heart 



and soul and mind has been enacted once 
and again by the Supreme Law-giver as the first 
and great commandment; and it is obvious that 
to do this is to fulfil the law concerning God, for 
love includes all obligations and embraces all duty. 
It is a shallow mistake, therefore, to suppose that 
this law of love is merely a sentimental require- 
ment, demanding nothing more than the play of 
amiable affections or the easy outgoings of a 
sunny good-nature. For truly to love is to do all 
the deeds and render all the service which love 
requires, up to the full measure of the capacity 
and opportunity; and though to do this is the de- 
light of the loving soul, yet so to love is the soul's 
noblest achievement, because it includes all sac- 
rifice and service. But man cannot love God sim- 
ply because he is commanded to do it, nor even 
because it is reasonable that he should do it. No 

1 Preached in St. Paul's Church, Detroit, on the morning of 
the fourth Sunday in Advent, 1886. 




232 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



matter how strong his faith, there must be some- 
thing in God to call forth his love ; and that some- 
thing there is, indeed, but it is not the perfection 
of His being nor the splendor of His state. It is 
not His wisdom, or His power, or His glory; it 
is His love. It is by His love that He makes His 
great appeal to man. " We love him because he 
first loved us." Now, there are two, and only two, 
conceivable ways in which God could have made 
His great appeal to man's love : one is by ex- 
hibiting His own love in unceasing bounty and 
beneficence ; the other is by showing His love in 
self-sacrifice. Now, it is conceivable, of course, 
that God might have relied on the first method, 
and that only. He is a God of bounty and be- 
neficence, and He might have called all His 
benevolent power into unceasing and unvarying 
action to supply every wish and gratify every 
desire as fast as it arose, giving to man perpet- 
ual sunshine, unfailing plenty, eternal spring and 
perennial flowers. Man's foolish fancy has often 
fastened on such Arcadian delights, and he has been 
prone to say, " How good and grateful I would 
be if God would only give me all that I desire ! " 
It requires but small reflection, however, to show 
us that man, being what he is, would not only be 
degraded by such unconditional beneficence, but 
that he would be made ungrateful and unloving 
by it. To say nothing of the failure of such a 
plan to make him noble and blessed, it is certain 
that it would also fail to make him even love the 
Giver. However much we may deplore it and 



SELF-SA CRIFICE. 



233 



be ashamed of it, it is nevertheless profoundly 
true, that unstinted beneficence does not kindle 
and keep alive the affections of the human heart. 
All the base annals of human ingratitude go to 
show that nothing is more inevitable than that the 
recipient of mere bounty, no matter how lavish 
and unfailing, will not long love the good hand 
that bestows it. The reason is that mere benefac- 
tion is not regarded by the human heart as the 
token of love. Something else must be added, 
and that something else is sacrifice. Self-sacri- 
fice is the one token of love which man believes 
in. The one appeal which always touches the 
human heart is the appeal of the cross. We all 
are daily reminded of this. In our homes we all 
know that it is not the carelessly indulgent father 
who is best beloved by his children ; but it is the 
self-sacrificing father, — the father who, for the love 
which he bears to his children, bears the cross in 
his daily life; the father who shows his love by 
his diligent and self-denying care, whose life is 
a life of self-giving and of unselfish devotion. So 
it is not the foolishly-indulgent mother who has 
either the best or the most loving children, but 
the mother who daily and hourly bears the cross 
in carefully guiding, restraining, teaching, ruling 
her children; who shows her love by many a 
self-sacrificing refusal and many a painstaking 
and self-sacrificing reiteration of precept and 
mandate, — she is the mother whose children are 
not only noble but loving, and who rise up and 
call her blessed. Oh, fathers, mothers, you who 



234 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



yearn not only for the well-being but for the love 
of your children, take this lesson to heart ! It is 
not by your careless bounty or by your easy in- 
dulgence, but it is by your Christian self-control, 
self-denial, self-sacrifice, that you must show the 
love that is to win love from your children's 
hearts. Their little hearts are not to be deceived 
by foolish, weak indulgences, and if that is all that 
you have to give them, then do not wonder if they 
repay you with base ingratitude; for the child is 
like the man, and can be touched and ruled by no 
love that does not show itself in self-sacrifice. 

It«was therefore in accordance with a profound 
principle of our nature that God chose rather the 
second of the two ways of showing His love ; not 
by careless beneficence merely, but by self-sacri- 
fice. " Hereby perceive we the love of God, be- 
cause he laid down his life for us." And this was 
in strict accordance with His own nature; for it 
is His nature to show His love in self-sacrifice. 
Let us now consider for a few moments the great 
appeal which He thus makes to our love, not only 
on Calvary, — though that was its supreme mani- 
festation, — but in all that He is and does, showing 
that He is actuated by an eternal principle which 
is the opposite of selfishness, and may therefore 
be fitly called self-sacrifice; and that this heroic 
principle is the essential characteristic of his great- 
ness. This is the argument made use of by the 
apostle in the text; it is more than godly, it is 
godlike, to show love by self-sacrifice. 

It is a great thought that in all that God has 



SELF-SA CRIFICE. 



235 



revealed of Himself to us, He has taught us that 
He is love, and that His love is a self-forgetting 
love. In the august councils which rule His ma- 
jestic economy, He thinks not of Himself, but of 
others. Nay, even in the mystery of the Godhead 
there have been from all eternity the movements of 
a self-giving love, — the Father loving the Son, and 
the Son the Father, and with these the co-eternal 
Spirit also loving and beloved. So God Himself 
is no isolated and lonely being, self-sufficient in 
majestic selfishness, but in the mystery of the 
Trinity of persons which co-exist in the unity 
of the Godhead, each person, forgetting Himself, 
pours out upon the others the treasures of infinite 
affection. Therefore it is that the doctrine of the 
Trinity is so precious to the Christian conscious- 
ness. To it our hearts turn with grateful relief 
from the cold and mathematical creed that denies 
companionship in the Godhead. Before all worlds, 
as we are taught by our holy faith, this lofty 
principle of the Divine life found its expression 
in the mutual interchange of affection betwixt the 
co-eternal persons of the Godhead, each medi- 
tating not upon His own glory but upon the 
glory of the others. If the life of God had not 
always been such, it were false to say that He is 
love. Self-love is selfishness; and I say it with 
all reverence, there had been no room for real 
love in the Godhead if there had been but one 
person in God. But the love which is His life 
demanded from everlasting to be fulfilled in the 
sacrifice of self-giving. And this is the essential 



236 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



greatness and the essential blessedness of the 
Godhead, companionship in unity, each person 
entirely loving the others and being by the 
others entirely beloved. 

But as if this abounding love desired some- 
thing less strong, more dependent, to be the 
object of the Divine affection, the created uni- 
verse was summoned into being. The myriad 
worlds of space and the myriad orders of Nature 
were called forth out of nothingness to be the 
objects of the Divine care. Therefore as one of 
the fathers has finely and profoundly said, crea- 
tion itself was an act of sublime self-sacrifice 
with God. And this is made the more apparent 
when we remember the generous conditions under 
which our race was created. God might have 
made us so that we could not transgress His law. 
He might have made us so that we must forever 
be the mere vassals of His will. But no; He de- 
sired in His creatures the love of a freeman, not 
the fear of a slave. In the magnanimity of His 
generous providence He made man in His own 
image and endowed Him with the godlike gift of 
freedom, and therefore with a power truly to love. 
And even foreknowing that man might fall away 
from this love, He yet endowed him with such 
liberty, because His provision embraced the mag- 
nificent purpose of redemption. So before the fiat 
of creation went forth, the council of peace had 
already been devised between the Father and the 
Son. The sacrifice of Calvary was already offered 
and accepted. The love which called our race into 



SELF-SA CRIFICE. 



237 



being had already yielded the Son to degradation 
and death, and the Lamb was slain before the 
foundation of the world. This deed of supremest 
self-sacrifice was involved therefore in the very 
act of creation, and by this token God shows that 
He loves the creation more than Himself. The 
cross measures all things, even the sublimity of 
the love of God ; for He called creation very good 
even while He looked down the ages to Calvary. 
The cross measures all things, even the complete- 
ness of that Infinite Love which planned before- 
hand, out of love for man, to yield up the Son 
of God. Oh, then, it is at the foot of the cross 
that we learn to know God, and that He is loved ; 
and it is there that His great appeal is made for 
our love in return. For there His love is ex- 
pressed in language which every generous heart can 
understand, in the surrender of God Himself in 
utter self-sacrifice. " Hereby perceive we the love 
of God, because he laid down his life for us." 

Now, then, here is the great appeal. It would 
seem that no heart can resist it which has been 
aroused through repentance to a knowledge of the 
baseness of sin and the blessedness of God's love, 
and has through faith appropriated the meaning 
of that love and made its peace with God. The 
effect is to awaken in the believing heart a respon- 
sive love, — a love in its degree like God's love. 
Nay, by the operation of the Holy Spirit His love 
is spread abroad in our hearts. Now, the move- 
ments of this love in the Christian's heart are no 
doubt feeble and fitful at first. But as the soul 



238 



THE DIGXITY OF MAX. 



grows in grace it grows also in its power to love 
God; and always, from the very first, it has its 
own tokens, and produces its own effects in the 
character and life, by which it may be known. 
In some of God's servants this love becomes a 
great and absorbing enthusiasm of the soul. There 
are some who can truly say with the Psalmist, 
" My soul is athirst for God, yea, even for the 
living God : when shall I come to appear before 
the presence of God ; " or with the sainted [Muhlen- 
berg, " Who, who would live alway, away from 
his God; " or with the great Bishop of Pittsburg, 
a few days before his death, ' l I long to be with 
God ; " or Saint Bernard, who wrote the beautiful 
hymn, — 

'•Jesus, the very thought of thee 

With sweetness fills the breast ; 
But sweeter far thy face to see, 

And in thy presence rest. 
No voice can sing, no heart can frame, 

Nor can the memory find, 
A sweeter sound than Jesus' name, 

The Saviour of mankind. 
O hope of every contrite heart, 

O joy of all the meek, 
To those who fall how kind Thou art, 

How good to those who seek ! 
But what to those who find ? Ah ! this 

Nor tongue nor pen can show ; 
The love of Jesus, what it is 

None but His loved ones know." 

But in all cases, while it may not, and often is 
not, such a passion as this, yet the love of God 



SELF-SA CRIFICE. 



239 



is real in those hearts which have come to a 
knowledge of His love. I need not enumerate 
all its tokens. They are summed up in the old 
w r ord " piety," a word of whose meaning even the 
heathen had some knowledge when they applied 
it; as, for instance, to " Pious ^Eneas," as to one 
whom the gods loved, and who therefore loved 
the gods. So, but in larger measure in the Chris- 
tian, piety is the answer of the human heart to 
God's love, and it shows itself in the reverence 
which is the habitual attitude of the soul towards 
God and all that belongs to Him; in the delight 
which it takes in His worship ; in the surrender 
of the will to His will, and the joyful doing of 
righteousness ; in the fixing of the mind and heart 
supremely on those things that are lovely, true, 
just, honest, pure, and of good report. But there 
is one supreme token of its presence in the soul, 
to which the apostle continually appeals, and 
that is brotherly love, ■ — a brotherly love which, 
like God's love, shall show itself in self-sacrifice. 
" Hereby perceive we the love of God, because 
he hath laid down his life for us; and we ought 
to lay down our lives for the brethren." 

My brethren, I am far from denying that there 
is such a natural grace as the power to love men. 
Spite of its rarity in the midst of abounding 
censoriousness, we know that it does exist; that 
there are men who are born with this divine gift. 
All the born leaders of men have it. All great 
men in all ages have been genuine lovers of their 
kind. Faith in men is one of the unfailing notes of 



240 THE DIGNITY OF MAN 

greatness ; and so love for men is another. No man 
can be a leader of men who does not love them. 
Some men there are, then, in every land who are 
born with this divine power, and they are born 
the leaders, the royal souls, the true kings, whether 
of low or high degree, and men know them, and 
follow them for good or evil. This power, how- 
ever, which is given by Nature only to the few, is 
offered by grace to all. In the heart that knows 
the love of God a responsive love is kindled which 
includes man. Not only so, but the Christian lover 
of men learns how to show his love with power, 
and always to make it work for good, — not as 
the easy good-nature of the sybarite, or with the 
dissembled selfishness of the demagogue, but in 
the genuine self-sacrifice of a love that is like the 
divine love in this, that it moves and enables 
him to lay down his life. " Hereby perceive we 
the love of God, because he laid down his life for 
us : and we ought to lay down our lives for the 
brethren." 

What does this mean? Brethren, it means 
something that you and I can do, ought to do, 
daily. It is no impossible requirement, it is no 
grievous commandment. It is simply the easy 
task of a genuine brotherly love. It means the 
reverse of selfishness ; it means the habitual think- 
ing and feeling and living not for self, but for 
others. It is to be shown in a thousand ways, — 
by the self-denial and self-control of gentle be- 
havior and good manners ; by feeling sympathy 
and expressing it, and by feeling kindness and 



SELF-SA CRIFICE. 



241 



showing it in the way appropriate to each case, but 
always in accordance with the dictates of a genu- 
ine brotherly love. Oh, it means more than 
bounty, more than lavish giving, more than care- 
less beneficence. It means simply the appro- 
priate conduct and the appropriate speech of one 
who truly loves his fellowmen, and who is large- 
minded and large-hearted enough to show it. 

Brethren, never was there a time when this truth 
needed so much to be insisted on as to-day. 
Business is imperilled, progress of all kinds is 
impeded, civil society is menaced by the greatest 
danger that has ever threatened it, simply because 
men have failed to heed this injunction of the text, 
and not only to love one another, but to show it 
by appropriate self-sacrifice. What is needed, in 
order to adjust all differences between labor and 
capital, is simply more of the religion of the Lord 
Jesus Christ, — a religion which shall teach genu- 
ine brotherly love to all men, among all classes ; 
a brotherly love which shall show itself in the self- 
sacrifice of righteous dealing and kind behavior, 
which is needed just as much among the poor as 
among the rich ; a brotherly love which shall make 
little instead of much of the accidents of wealth 
and poverty, and make every man to show a genu- 
ine regard for all men in the way appropriate to 
each. This is the one thing that can settle our 
existing difficulties, and restore industrial harmony 
and public peace. Additional legislation cannot 
do it, nor can all the foolish and vicious devices 
of communism and socialism and agrarianism, no 

16 



242 



THE DIGXITY OF MAN. 



matter by whom proposed. They are all but the 
vain attempts to substitute something cheap and 
easy in place of the old-fashioned practice of self- 
sacrificing brotherly love, — a brotherly love which 
is costly and difficult indeed to the natural man, 
but which ought to be the delight of the Chris- 
tian ; which is the delight of the man whose heart 
has truly responded to the love of God. And 
such self-sacrificing brotherly love is might}' among 
men. For just as we perceive God's love, not be- 
cause of His beneficence or of His bounty, but 
because He laid down His life for us, so will men 
perceive our love for them, and will respond to 
it, only when we show it by our loving self-sacri- 
fice. And oh, to do the royal part is not to wait 
for men first to love us, but to love them first! 
This is the royal way to win men's love, to con- 
strain them to say, u \Ve love him because he first 
loved us." 



SERMON XIV. 



THE ONLY GOSPEL FOR THE POOR. 1 

Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and show John again 
those things which ye do hear and see : the blind receive their 
sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf 
hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel 
preached to them. — St. Matt. xi. 4, 5. 

THERE seems to be no doubt that the faith of 
John the Baptist had begun to falter. To 
say that it had, involves no discreditable imputa- 
tion against the character of that eminent servant 
of God. He was the free son of the desert, and 
he had lately been cast into prison, — the very 
child of impulse and inspiration, and yet he had 
been bound and gagged by the hand of despotism. 
He was a brave orator and preacher, who had 
nourished his youth sublime with the promise that 
he was to be the acknowledged herald and hon- 
ored messenger of the Most High; and yet he had 
been arrested by a cruel and arbitrary king, and 
banished to a remote and solitary dungeon, out 
of which the voice of his prophecy could be no 
longer heard ; and the young Messiah, whose ad- 
vent he had heralded, seemed content to have it 
so. The Redeemer of whom he had spoken to all 

1 Preached in St. Paul's Church, Detroit, on the morning of the 
fourth Sunday in Advent, 1887. 



244 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



who waited and wearied for redemption seemed 
to have no deliverance to offer to him. And so 
with the longing of a captive soul not yet fully 
instructed as to the true meaning and scope of 
Christ's Messiahship, he sent to ask the question 
of Jesus, " Art thou he that should come, or look 
we for another ? " The answer was intended, 
doubtless, to instruct as well as to reassure him. 
It was no part of the Messiah's mission to forcibly 
break the bond of temporal authority. To lift 
up the standard of revolt against even a tyrant's 
power was not the appointed work of man's Re- 
deemer, but to loose the captives of sin, to minis- 
ter to affliction and sorrow, to quicken and raise 
the dead, and to preach the gospel to the poor, — 
this was and is the appropriate work of the Son 
of God. 

Two kinds of credentials of Christ's mission and 
character are here declared to have been de- 
spatched to the captive John, — the first miracu- 
lous, the second moral. There is no time to say 
more than a word, in passing, of the comparative 
evidential value of them. Miraculous evidence is 
perpetually demanded by unbelief, yet unbelief 
is absolutely disqualified from understanding it. 
The whole value of such evidence depends upon 
the condition under which it is employed, and the 
uses to which it is applied. It is valuable for the 
purpose of instructing and confirming antecedent 
belief, especially when, like John the Baptist's 
faith, it begins to falter; but it is valueless because 
it is meaningless to an unbeliever. The prodigies 



THE OXLY GOSPEL FOR THE POOR. 245 

wrought by Christ were veritable miracles. They 
were the indefensible attestations of His divine 
power. It is not lawful to worship Christ, and it 
is not possible even to respect Him, unless the 
wonders which He did were miracles, wrought, as 
He claimed, by an essential and indwelling God- 
head. But, on the other hand, while Christianity 
is fully committed to a defence of miraculous tes- 
timony, yet it remains true that miraculous testi- 
mony alone cannot produce religious conviction. 
Christ's miracles alone, in point of fact, have never 
done so, and were never intended to do so. They 
were the outcome of a supernatural life; and un- 
less we grasp, in some degree at least, the meaning 
of that life, we cannot be taught by them or under- 
stand them. 

But the concluding words of the text refer to a 
better, a higher, a more enduring testimony. Far 
better than the evidence of miracles, even to the 
instructive understanding, is the fact recorded 
here: " The poor have the gospel preached to 
them." Surrounded as we are by an unbelief that 
is not merely defensive, but is aggressive and dar- 
ing, the Christian thinker is compelled to defend 
and vindicate the intellectual and philosophical 
side of Christianity. To do this is not only a nec- 
essary task, but it is one that is worthy to engage 
and certain to reward the noblest energies. There 
is no department of human knowledge that may 
not be successfully laid under full contribution. 
We may take our stand upon the loftiest summit 
of modern thought, and summon buried ages from 



246 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



the sepulchres of the past, and each, as its sages 
and warriors shall walk dimly under review, shall 
lay a tribute down at the feet of Jesus. We may 
spread the volume of archaeology out before us ; 
we may go to the East and decipher the epitaphs 
that mark the spot where forgotten empires have 
crumbled into dust, and to the West where Nature's 
more lasting monuments lift up to the skies the 
sign- manual writ by primeval glaciers and imme- 
morial storms. In every region of earth and in 
every era of history there are to be gathered evi- 
dences of the truth recorded in this priceless vol- 
ume, — that Jesus is not only the world's greatest 
Teacher, but is also its Saviour and Redeemer. To 
follow free thought into every field with a spirit of 
inquiry as free, and to defend the faith at every 
point of attack, is a part of the unavoidable duty 
of the militant Church of God. Yet it is not, after 
all, on these lofty altitudes of thought that Chris- 
tianity's most cogent and most persuasive evi- 
dences are found, but rather in the valleys and 
along the pathways of common life, and espe- 
cially in the hearts of the poor. And by the poor, 
I mean not only the poor in this world's goods, 
but all the poor in spirit, all the sons and daugh- 
ters of affliction, all the lowly-minded and hungry- 
hearted. To them the gospel comes bearing its 
own mighty credentials. No splendid argument 
is necessary to commend it when once the human 
soul becomes conscious of its need. No miracle 
of power, no messenger from on high, is required 
to urge its authority upon a broken and contrite 



THE ONLY GOSPEL FOR THE POOR. 247 



heart Let sickness come, or bereavement, or sor- 
row, or the shame of self-reproachful penitence, 
and make the grieved and stricken spirit poor, and 
then the heart leaps up and recognizes in the 
words of the gospel the accents of its Redeemer. 
Scepticism may vex, and heresy distress, and schism 
rend the Church; but so long as sorrow continues 
to sadden, and affliction to desolate, and want, 
whether physical or mental or spiritual, to agonize 
the human heart, the poor in spirit will continue to 
have the gospel preached to them, and will hear 
it gladly. Martha will tell her troubles to Jesus, 
and Mary will sit at His feet; when sorrow comes 
both will go out to meet Him; and Jairus will fly 
to Him to tell Him about his dying daughter; 
and blind Bartimeus will raise his supplicating cry; 
and all the mighty multitude of grieved and peni- 
tent and hungry-hearted will seek Him, and will 
hear His gospel when it is preached to them. 

But let us get a little closer to our text. The 
old word " gospel " means, as you know, " good 
news," " glad tidings ; " and the very fact that Chris- 
tianity has a gospel, or good news, for the poor, is 
its great credential. In this respect Christianity 
is unique, for no other system of thought has any 
such gospel. Let us take the term " the poor " in 
its ordinary signification. Let us take it to mean 
the great and growing class of those whose daily 
life is a perpetual struggle with want and wretched- 
ness. Without accumulated capital of money, or 
skill, or thought, they must daily front the great 
and awful problems of life, and must drudge or 



24S 



THE DIG. VI TV OF MAX. 



beg in order to solve them. Heretofore, perhaps, 
our country has had fewer than any other land of 
these outcast and disinherited poor, but now they 
are beginning to multiply with startling rapidity. 
And of the comparatively poor, proletarian poor, 
those whose daily lives are a daily struggle with 
poverty, and who must depend on daily toil for 
daily bread, why, they far outnumber the rich and 
even the independent Considered as factors in 
the industrial, economical, political life of the na- 
tion, they are of immense importance. To the 
mere economist or statesman, to one who looks 
upon them simply as a large and growing class, 
the study of their needs and capacities is of im- 
mense and pressing interest. How much more, 
then, to a genuine lover of his country and of his 
kind ! How vital the inquiry, what living word of 
good news has any system or any man to speak 
to the poor? 

And first let us inquire, Has unbelief any such 
gospel? We will suppose, if you please, that 
Christianity is for the time being set aside, and 
that free scope is given to atheism to tell all the 
so-called good news that it has to offer. Accord- 
ingly it comes with jaunty air, and proclaims its 
lately discovered gospel that there is no God, 
or at least there is none that we can know or 
need care about; and that there is no future life, 
or at least no personal immortality. It is true 
that all this has a certain sinister sound, since it 
bereaves man of his noblest hope and his loftiest 
thought, and relegates him to the condition of 



THE ONLY GOSPEL FOR THE POOR. 249 



the brutes that perish ; but let us not be too 
critical just yet. It claims to be good news, and 
it tells the careless, the gay, the selfish, that there 
is no God to judge, and no eternity to reward or 
punish ; and perhaps the selfishly gay and care- 
less may rejoice for a little season in this new 
evangel. But how about the poor? How about 
the millions of the w r eary, the heavy-laden, the 
hungry-hearted? What gospel has this creedless 
atheism to give to the poor? 

Well, let us be perfectly fair, and freely admit 
all the comfort that it has to give. It has two 
messages for the poor, and only two : one, the 
message of the demagogue; the other, the mes- 
sage of the scientific philosopher. And first, let 
the atheistical demagogue speak his message; it 
is the new r evangel of socialism, of communism, or 
anarchy. He begins by declaring that all poverty 
is merely artificial ; that it is the result of the 
greed of the rich and the cunning of the powerful, 
who make law r s for their own advantage. He 
tells them that property is robbery ; that w r ealth is 
crime ; that all government is monstrous tyranny ; 
that what the masses ought to do, is simply to 
overthrow government and abolish property, and 
let all men have all things in common : that such 
a revolution would do away with poverty. The 
answer is, that all this is a contemptible falsehood, 
a shallow lie. Even if he could carry out his 
scheme and keep men in the condition to which 
he would commit them, the result would be, not 
the abolishing of poverty, but the making of it 



250 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 



universal. Not only so, but it would make poverty 
even more wretched than it is to-day even in its 
worst form. It would level men down instead 
of levelling them up, and would recommit them 
to a state of tribal savagery out of which there 
would be no power to lift and no hope to guide 
them. If the dream of the communist could be 
realized, all traces of civilization would speedily dis- 
appear. Skill, energy, industry, capacity, would 
cease to be employed, because the motive to use 
them would be utterly impaired. All the noblest 
enterprises would be abandoned, and the grass 
would grow in our streets. And along with this 
economical impoverishment there would be the 
far worse impoverishment of mind, of soul, of 
spirit. All the sweet ministries which now adorn 
prosperity, and all the gentle yet strong graces 
which now dignify adversity, would utterly vanish. 
Hope would disappear, and gratitude ; in the 
place of these would arise the utterly savage and 
brutal traits of unreasoning self-will and other 
selfishness. If, then, the remedies proposed by 
communism were possible, they would make the 
poor man's lot not better, but a thousand times 
worse; they would reduce him and all men to 
tribal savagery again, and make the fair earth 
pandemonium, or a howling wilderness, or a waste. 
Surely this is no gospel for the poor. 

But atheism has another message for the poor, 
and only one other: this is the teaching, not of 
the demagogue, but of the man of science. He 
comes forward and says that the present state of 



THE ONLY GOSPEL FOR THE POOR. 25 1 

the poor man is not unnatural ; that it is not only 
natural, but it is necessary and inevitable ; that it 
is simply the result of that great law of the sur- 
vival of the fittest, which makes the strong pros- 
per, and the weak and incapable fail and finally 
die. Well, let us continue to be perfectly fair. 
Let us admit that there is such a law in Nature 
as the survival of the fittest. Let us admit that, 
so far as natural law is concerned, what the man 
of science says is true, — horribly, hideously, sci- 
entifically true ; but surely it is no gospel. The 
truer it is the less of a gospel it is, and the more 
need there is for some supernatural gospel to 
come to man from beyond this dreary reign of re- 
morseless law. In point of fact, the unbelieving 
man of science does not often try to comfort the 
poor. It is not such as he that builds hospitals, 
or orphanages, or houses of mercy. But let us 
suppose that such a man does undertake to pro- 
claim his scientific creed among the poor. We 
will go with him, if he please, on his round of 
enlightenment. He enters the lowly abode of 
poverty. He finds there a man looking with 
tearless eyes upon the worn and pinched faces 
of the little ones that are crying to him for the 
bread that he cannot give; and he says to him, 
"My good man, your suffering is but the result of 
the working of a great law of Nature and of society. 
It is necessary to the progress of the race that the 
weaker should give way to the stronger; that the 
fittest should survive, and that you and your little 
ones should perish ; it must be so for the progress 



252 



THE DIGNITY OF MAX. 



of humanity ; your comfort is that in some remote 
future the humanity that then shall be living its 
little day on the earth will probably be a little 
happier because you are miserable now. And as 
for the weak impulse of benevolence that tempts 
me to relieve your poverty, it would be a scientific 
mistake ; for it can be scientifically demonstrated 
that the sooner you die and get out of the way 
the better." This is all that scientific atheism has to 
say. It has no good news, no gospel for the poor. 

Let us turn now to Christianity. What has it 
to say to the poor? Oh, now we hear glad tidings 
indeed ; now we hear a real gospel ! It comes 
to the poor man with help in its hands and with 
pity in its heart; and while it soothes and relieves 
it tells its good news of hope, of love, of life. It 
proclaims that his poverty and his want and his 
need belong to an order and a world that is pass- 
ing away; and that God, the loving God, has 
another world, — the real world, — in which to re- 
dress all the inequalities of this ; that God has a 
whole eternity in which to console the poor, — an 
eternity of peace for the troubled, of rest for the 
weary, of joy for the afflicted, when men and wo- 
men and children shall hunger no more, and thirst 
no more ; where there shall be no more pain, 
neither sorrow nor crying, for God shall wipe away 
all tears from their eyes. Ah, yes, this begins to 
sound like good news indeed, like a real gospel to 
the poor. We need not wonder, then, that this is 
chosen as the mightiest credential of Christianity, 
— this good news from another world and another 



THE ONLY GOSPEL FOR THE POOR. 253 



life. This sanctifies the humblest lot and glorifies 
the pauper's dying bed; this alone is able to put 
the light of another world into the dim eyes of the 
toiling millions, to charm their weariness away. 

But again, the gospel of Christianity is not only 
the gospel of hope, but a gospel of might. Not 
only does it tell of glory after suffering, but of 
glory by reason of suffering. It reveals to the 
sufferer the sweetness of adversity. It casts a flood 
of light on the dark problems of pain and sorrow, 
and reveals the cross as the wisdom and power of 
God. No one but a suffering Saviour could have 
disclosed this mighty principle, — the wisdom and 
power of the cross ; and under the teaching of this 
gospel poverty itself is transformed into a train- 
ing for heroes and demi-gods. It comes to the 
poor man and says to him, " Oh, my brother, do 
not repine. Only take your lot as an appointed 
discipline of love ; only take up your weariness, 
your toil, your suffering, your disappointment, as 
a cross ; only carry them as a burden which your 
Master has appointed to make you strong. And 
so out of poverty shall come riches, and out of 
sorrow joy, and out of labor rest." This, then, is 
a real gospel for the poor. 

But finally, it is good news, the only good news 
for the poor, even in this world. For it reveals 
God's fatherhood and man's brotherhood, and it 
makes that brotherhood real. Oh the blessed reve- 
lation of God's fatherhood ! Inexpressibly sweet 
is this good news to every soul to which it comes. 
To be told that the great Deity who made and 



254 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 



rules this world is no careless potentate or cruel 
tyrant, or remorseless judge, but a Father, all 
merciful, all pitiful, all tender; and to have Him 
revealed by a loving Son as a reconciled Father, 
who for His Son's sake has already forgiven man's 
weaknesses and sins, — oh, this is the gladdest tid- 
ings that ever greeted human ears ; this is the good 
gospel to all men ! How much more is it glad 
tidings to the poor ! For the poor man, disowned 
and outcast it may be, to be told that God is his 
Father, that he is a child of royal lineage, even the 
son of heaven's Almighty King, — how does that 
evangel dignify and gladden and glorify him ! It is 
true that hardships remain, and trials, and sorrows, 
and burdens; but these do not matter so much to 
a child of God. It does not so much matter that 
the son of a king should have to suffer a little 
hardship, to camp for a little while on the windy 
hillside, or to clamber for a season over the dark 
mountains, especially as he is simply journeying 
home. And this glorious fact of God's father- 
hood reveals another fact hardly less glorious, of 
man's brotherhood, — teaches the poor man him- 
self, that since all men are his brothers, therefore 
he must love them as brothers. Think how this 
sweetens the poor man's life within : helping him 
to love all men, even the prosperous ; to be patient 
with all men, even the selfish and hard ; to be kind 
to all men, even those who are ungracious and 
cruel, because all men are his brothers, no matter 
how unmindful and unworthy, and are therefore to 
be loved by him. Whether the rich heed this 



THE ONLY GOSPEL FOR THE POOR. 2$$ 

gospel does not so much matter; he heeds it, and 
it sweetens all his life, banishing envy, and bitter- 
ness, and hatred, and malice, and all uncharitable- 
ness, in teaching him that all men are his brothers, 
and that therefore he must feel and act a brother's 
part with them, even as God is his Father, and that 
he must therefore act a son's part to God. Surely 
this is a gospel for the poor. 

Finally, it is also a gospel for all men ; for in a 
certain true sense all men are poor. You and I, my 
brothers, my sisters, we too need this gospel, for we 
too are poor, — poor in our daily want, poor in our 
perpetual need, poor in the utter inadequacy of all 
our possessions to satisfy our yearnings, poor in 
our dependence on one another and on our God. 
We bring nothing into the world, and we can carry 
nothing out. So far as this world's riches are con- 
cerned, we all must die as we were born, in utter 
helplessness and penury. And while we are here 
how utterly foreign to our true life are all the riches 
that we possess ! How true is the old saying of 
the Master, that a man's life consisteth not in the 
things that he hath ! Hunger of mind, hunger of 
soul, hunger of heart, — these daily return to us. 
The mind, the soul, the heart, is continually crying 
out for more. Where can we find the more that 
we need and ask, but in God? And as we medi- 
tate on these things, behold our poverty becomes 
plain. And, strange paradox, to this both worlds 
are given: " Blessed are the meek : for they shall 
inherit the earth ; " " Blessed are the poor in spirit : 
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.'' 



SERMON XV. 



A CHRISTMAS MESSAGE. 1 

In him was life ; and the life was the light of men. — St. 
John i. 4. 

I THINK we all must feel that there is no ser- 
vice so beautiful as that which is appointed 
for this day, and that music and poetry have cast 
the spell of their enchantment about us. Not 
only in canticle and anthem, but also in the match- 
less poems which are selected as our lessons from 
Holy Scripture, the Church still shows that the 
sweet strains of the angelic hymn are lingering in 
her heart. But our services are more than a burst 
of poetic rapture ; they are more than a divinely 
inspired symphony of music and song. They em- 
body the most precious truths which God has yet 
given to man ; and we must not permit the exu- 
berance even of Christian fancy to obscure them. 
We are called to meditate now upon the profound 
truths which lie at the foundation of all being, and 
to think of the most sublime doctrines that are 
connected with the soul's life. Let us not refuse, 
then, to company with high thoughts this morn- 
ing. Let us turn to the magnificent passage which 

1 Preached in St. Pauls Church, Detroit, on Christmas morn- 
ing, 1887. 



A CHRISTMAS MESSAGE. 



257 



constitutes the Gospel for the day, and think for a 
few moments upon one of its statements, — u In 
him was life, and the life was the light of men." 

My brethren, it is a great truth, that Jesus is the 
one Divine answer to all human questions concern- 
ing God. For long ages the supreme aspiration 
of the best of the human race had been to find 
some way in which the creature can come to know 
and love the Creator. Fantastic superstition and 
grim or pathetic idolatries had long borne witness 
in every land to this, humanity's profoundest need, 
and also to humanity's failure to satisfy it. 

But in the fulness of time, and in accordance 
with the other purposes of redeeming grace, God 
made Himself known in human form, in order that 
men might know and love Him. The incarnation, 
then, was the great revelation of God, the revealing 
of the Infinite to the finite comprehension, and 
therefore through the finite ; the manifestation of 
Deity both to human thought and human affection 
in the only possible way, that is, through the in- 
carnate Son of God. And it is one of the aspects 
of this sublime unity that I wish to direct your 
attention to this morning. In Jesus we are per- 
mitted to look upon the great mystery of life. He 
declared this of Himself, and His apostles declared 
it of Him, in terms which it is impossible to eradi- 
cate of their deep and literal signification. Saint 
John says, " In him was life, and the life was the 
light of men." Saint Peter speaks of Him as the 
Prince of life, and the Lord of life. He Himself 
said at Bethany, " I am the Resurrection and the 

17 



258 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 



Life ; " and again, " I am the Way, the Truth, and 
the Life; " and the assurance of continuing exist- 
ence which He gave to his militant Church was 
founded on the same great claim : " Because I live, 
ye shall live also." It is in view of this truth that 
Christian thinkers often make use of expressions 
which seem mystical and unreal to unchristian 
apprehension ; as, for instance, when they speak 
of the Son of God as the fount of all being, of His 
power as the source of all force, of His constancy 
as the cause of all permanence, and of history it- 
self as the unfolding of His purpose. And how- 
ever remote these great conclusions are from the 
present hypothesis of inductive philosophy, they 
are easily achieved by sober Christian thought 
whenever it accepts the great truth that as God is 
the Author of all being, so His Son is the Revealer 
of all life. We believe, therefore, not as Mystics, 
but as sober reasoners from truth to fact, that all 
the phenomena which men call natural are but 
the revealings of His power; and that beneath the 
ordinary workings of Nature and the operations of 
secondary causes the living love and blessed power 
of the Son of God are energizing and welling forth. 
We believe that no man can understand the mys- 
tery of the universe, nor the meaning of God's 
word, unless he accepts this teaching; and we 
look for the day when science, now so mute and 
sceptical, will come and lay her well-won crowns 
down at the feet of Jesus. It is only in the light 
of this luminous verity that we can begin to un- 
derstand our Lord's miracles. They simply show 



A CHRISTMAS MESSAGE. 



259 



the everlasting fact, — the Lord of Nature ordering 
Nature, and the Lord of Life wielding the powers 
of life. They were simply the signs and tokens 
that the universe is as truly subservient to His will 
as it is subject to His law. And if we could only 
grasp this truth in its fulness, how easily we should 
discover the deep harmony that exists between 
Nature and the gospel ! We should see that every 
manifestation of God in His works is but a new 
beat of His heart ; that His successive creations are 
the putting forth in forms of matter of an abound- 
ing and ever-springing life. And we can intelli- 
gently address the poet's apostrophe to him : — 

11 God of the granite and the rose, 

Lord of the sparrow and the bee, 
The mighty tide of being flows 

Through countless channels, Lord, from thee. 
It leaps to life in grass and flowers, 

Through every grade of being runs : 
And from creation's radiant towers 

Its glory flames in stars and suns." 

But our Christmas teaching invites us to take a 
more human view of this great subject. It is not 
so much in the splendor of His Divine power, nor 
in the magnificence of His far-reaching purpose; 
it is not in Jesus the orderer, nor in Jesus the up- 
holder, but it is in Jesus the liver of man's human 
life that He showed Himself to be the light of men. 
And the light shines for us upon every phase of 
human experience. When the Word was made 
flesh and dwelt among us, He began to live a 
human life. He was not masquerading in a sham 



200 



THE DIGNITY OF MAX. 



humanity; He was not making believe to live the 
life of a man. When He was born, He was born 
into a helpless human infancy. When He grew in 
childhood, He increased in wisdom as in stature, 
and like all poor and heroic boys He grew in favor 
with God and man. When He reached the state 
of manhood, He lived such an every-day life as 
other men lived, with homely joys and human 
sorrows, with toil and weariness and rest. For 
thirty years there was not much recorded of it, 
and the reason was that there was hardly anything 
to tell. It was not in the peculiarities of an ex- 
ceptional career, nor in the eccentricities of ex- 
traordinary achievement, that the Divine life that 
was in Him exhibited its most precious teaching; 
but it was in the ordinary duties and common 
vicissitudes of human experience. And though 
the time did come when His power flashed forth 
in miracle and prophecy, yet it was not on these 
that the apostle fastened when he spoke long after- 
ward of the illuminating splendor of His influence ; 
it was not on His works, though His works did 
avouch His divineness, nor even on His words, 
though His words were full of grace and truth, 
nor was it on His intellectual eminence, nor His 
genius, nor His statesmanship, though in all these 
respects He was easily the first of the human race; 
but it was upon the life that was in Him that the 
apostle fastened his thought. This it was that 
made Him the great teacher and illuminator of 
mankind. " In him was life," he said, " and the 
life was the light of men." 



A CHRISTMAS MESSAGE. 



26l 



It is now admitted by all scientific observers and 
accurate thinkers that life is the mystery of all 
mysteries. We look upon its work in many forms, 
but we cannot look upon itself. We see what it 
does through many agencies and organisms, but 
we cannot exactly define it. We only know that 
of all the powers of Nature it is the subtlest and 
mightiest. When it is present, it holds the swiftest 
powers of destruction at bay. When it retires, 
they do their wild work of desolation and death. 
Not only is it mighty, but it is illusive. When we 
attempt to examine it, it vanishes ; when we at- 
tempt to bind it or cage it, it is gone, and leaves 
death in our grasp. Not only is it mighty and 
illusive, but it is protean. It assumes a thousand 
forms. The tender shoots spring up side by side 
in the springtime ; one blushes into a fragrant 
rose, the other grows into a deadly plant, and yet 
it is the same principle of life. Two eggs are 
warmed into being in the same nest ; the one 
grows as a barnyard fowl, the other turns out to 
be an eagle, and soars away to find an eyrie and 
a home on the mountain-top. Two men grow up 
side by side ; the abounding life of one climbs the 
heroic path of duty with aspiring feet, the other is 
betrayed into ruin by the superabundance of his 
life. Therefore, I repeat, it is mysterious, it is 
mighty, it is illusive, it is protean ; it seems to be 
outside of all the organisms in which it does its 
w r ork, and yet to be so modified by those organ- 
isms as to take on indefinite variety. By what 
name shall we call this subtle, this mysterious, this 



262 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 



mighty, this protean power? It is often guarded 
by a subtle intelligence, and yet it is not intellect 
merely. It is endowed with unfailing intuitions, 
and yet it is not instinct It is force, and yet it is 
more, because there is no correlation between it 
and other forms of force. What is it? We must 
still call it by the one word that has no synonym, 
by the most mysterious name in all the vocabu- 
laries of human speech save one : we must still 
call it life. Now, it was the supreme distinction 
of Jesus, that in Him we are able to see life in 
its original and essential character. This was the 
supreme distinction that He claimed for Himself : 
" As the Father hath life in himself, so hath he 
given to the Son to have life in himself." So here 
Saint John says of Him, " In him was life, and the 
life was the light of men." Here now we have 
this mighty, this mysterious power doing its own 
proper work. We can study it here ; it no longer 
eludes us. We can look at it in Jesus as He lived 
the life, the true life of man. Therefore the apostle 
says of it, This life is the light of men. 

What, now, were the essential peculiarities of life 
as it was exhibited by Jesus, as it shone forth in 
Jesus? I answer in few words. In Him was an 
obedient, a loving, a self-sacrificing life. And those 
qualities — obedience, love, self-sacrifice — were 
but the phases or aspects of the same character. 
In Him life was the outgoing of a Divine na- 
ture. In virtue of this, it was never of self that 
He thought. In virtue of this, self-seeking, self- 
sufficiency, pride, self-will, all kinds of selfish- 



A CHRISTMAS MESSAGE. 



263 



ness were impossible to Him. By this power He 
vanquished the tempter and rebuked devils, and 
healed sickness and raised the dead. Nay, by 
this power He vanquished death itself, and burst 
the bonds of the grave, and returned again to 
triumphant and eternal life. Here, now, is a study 
worthy of men and of angels. On this blessed 
Christmas morning we will not refuse to ponder 
it. Life in Jesus, — see how it behaved itself ; see 
how it won its victories, not by dazzling achieve- 
ment, nor by exuberant overflow in prodigy and 
miracle, but by a law which showed itself in 
obedience, in self-giving, in self-sacrifice. Among 
men this supreme characteristic of life had been 
utterly forgotten. It was supposed that life was 
a grasping and self-seeking thing; that it was 
rich and strong and worthy in proportion to what 
it gained and exacted and appropriated. It was 
supposed that giving and self-giving were the 
wasting and abdication of its power; that sacrifice 
and self-sacrifice were utter shame and defeat. But 
behold, when the Divine life flowed into the world 
at the birth of Jesus, and began to do man's part 
and to be man's life, there was a complete reversal 
of this human judgment. Then it was seen that 
life is strong and rich and worthy in proportion 
to what it gives, what it parts with, what it be- 
stows ; that self-forgetting is its health, that self- 
giving is its joy, that self-sacrifice is its triumph 
and its glory. Such was the life that was in Jesus, 
and this life is the light of men. 

My brethren, let us not refuse to ponder this 



264 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN 



great lesson as we commemorate the human birth 
of the Son of God. Perhaps there has never been 
a time when such a lesson was more needed than 
it is to-day. In this age of a material civilization 
so splendid as to be almost barbaric, and when 
human success is rewarded by material achieve- 
ment, how subtle the danger that we and our chil- 
dren may make the fatal mistake of supposing 
that life's characteristic excellence and dignity 
consist in getting and appropriating and heaping 
up, instead of in giving, in bestowing, in blessing; 
that w r e should forget the old divine truth, that 
he is richest who gives most, and he is most blest 
who loves most, and that he is strongest who 
most completely sacrifices himself. Let us seek, 
then, on this Christmas morning, to cast away our 
false conception, and return to true views of life. 
The very story of Bethlehem and the manger 
contains a correction of all our false thinking. 
See how completely the very beginning of Jesus' 
earthly life seems, as we meditate upon it, to teach 
us true and large and noble thoughts. On this 
day the Divine life flowed into the world, and be- 
gan to do man's part in the human life of Jesus. 
Yet it was an outcast birth, in order to teach 
us that life is more than the clothes it wears 
and the house which it inhabits. It was a lonely 
birth, in order to teach us that life is more than 
any associates of kinship or companionship that 
can cluster around it. It was the birth of utter 
poverty, in order to teach us that man's life con- 
sisteth not in the things that he hath. Yes, life is 



A CHRISTMAS MESSAGE. 



265 



more than houses and dignities and riches ; its 
essential dignity and grandeur cannot be impaired 
or enhanced by the absence or by the presence 
of these or any of these ; but whatsoever dignity 
and grandeur it shall have is measured only by 
the love of which it is the fulfilment. Do you 
tell me that this is a teaching too transcendental 
for our day and time? Yet this is the teaching, 
not of the birth only, but of the whole life of 
Jesus. Strange contrast between the base and 
sordid ideas of the world, and the grandest and 
most heroic life in all its annals ! Strange that 
it must be said of the Divine man, of the ideal 
man, of the model of all manly excellence and 
dignity and worth, that He was not a maker of 
money, that He was not a seeker of dignity or 
place, that He was utterly homeless, and without 
a place of His own to lay His head. And yet how 
strong, how affluent, how glorious was His life ! It 
was the Divine life doing man's part in the world, 
and therefore it was the ideal life. " In him was 
life, and the life was the light of men." 

Yes, it is a mighty truth, a precious truth, a 
truth that is needed to save this age from sordid 
baseness and shame and degradation. Poets have 
tried to illustrate and embellish it. Sages and 
philosophers have lavished their thought upon it 
to give it acceptance among men ; but how shall 
we learn it so well as in the old gospel story, — 
by simply looking to Jesus. In Him was life : in 
Jesus the outcast babe; in Jesus the obedient boy; 
in Jesus the lovely youth ; in Jesus the wayfaring 



266 



THE DIGNITY OF MAX. 



man; in Jesus the self-forgetting teacher; in Jesus 
the pitiful Saviour; in Jesus the dying Redeemer; 
in Jesus the self-sacrificing and therefore trium- 
phant God. Men thought it was poverty, but the 
angels knew that it was riches ; men scorned it 
as weakness and shame and defeat, but the angels 
came thronging through the cloven skies to hymn 
His greatness when He was born, and they waited 
on Him and ministered to Him all through His glo- 
rious career, and they watched with bated breath 
the grandeur of His sacrifice, and they told with 
shining faces of the consequent glory of His resur- 
rection and ascension into heaven. They have 
always known, and would that we might always 
know, that " in him was life, and the life was the 
light of men." 



INSTITUTES OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 

An Introduction to Historic Reading and Study. By the 
Rt. Rev. A. Cleveland Coxe, D.D., Bishop of Western New 
York. Large i2mo, 328 pages, $1.50. 

The "Institutes" are outlines, bold sketches emphasizing leading facts and 
dominating principles, serving as guide-posts for points of departure in every age. 
There is pith and point on every page, and the charm of the author's incisive, 
animated style runs through all. — The Living Church, Chicago. 

The work undertaken by Bishop Coxe ... is to help the student of church 
history to a just point of view, to impress him with the importance of studying 
history as one should study philosophy or political economy, in a scientific spirit, 
to accompany the reader through the principal pitfalls which lie in his way; to 
guard him against accepting certain themes as true, simply because they have been 
reiterated through many ages, and generally speaking, to bring doctrines, themes, 
and traditions to the test of fact and principle. — The Dominion Churchman, 
Toronto. 

These lectures are by no means a mere dry compendium. They are through- 
out vitalized by philosophic thought expressed in picturesque language. The 
author not only seeks to give the outline of those forces, and their historic devel- 
opment, which have gone to make up Christian history, but he also gives their 
causal connection. The young student, not confused with a mass of incidental 
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experience are at the basis of their remarkable success in making the development 
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The spirit of the author is broad and tolerant. . . . Bishop Coxe entertains 
his own opinions on many subjects, and does not hesitate to advance them; they 
add point and interest to his lectures without marring at all their historical sym- 
metry or interrupting the course of the historical movement. For general readers 
the course possesses in a high degree the qualities required in an introduction, 
and may be commended without reserve as an excellent book of Christian history 
with which to start young readers, and for use in Sunday reading. — The Inde- 
pendent, New York. 

For sale by all booksellers. Sent, post-paid, on receipt of the price, 
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WITNESSES TO CHRIST. 

A Contribution to Christian Apologetics. By William 
Clark, M.A., Professor of Philosophy in Trinity College, 
Toronto. Large i2mo, 300 pages, $1.50. 

The reader of this volume will soon find that its sub-title is much too modest, 
and that it is one of the ablest issues of the day upon Christian apologetics. In 
the important matter of dealing with phases of contemporaneous thought in their 
relations to gospel truth, and in endeavors to extract testimonies to that truth 
from foes as well as from friends, the author has been eminently successful. . . . 
The two lectures upon the resurrection of our Lord — that miracle of miracles 
which alone establishes the truth of Christianity — have never, probably, been 
excelled for cogency of logic ; and the entire volume should be carefully and 
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The main topics usually found in a book of apologetics have come under re- 
view, and are treated with marked learning and thoughtfulness. It deals with 
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time. — The Churchman, New York. 

This volume possesses the rare virtue of being positive in character. Its 
avoidance of mere argument is remarkable. One rises from its perusal feeling 
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dilemma, but face to face with four blank walls, too high to be scaled, too strong 
to be pierced, built out of stones quarried from history, and ordered at the dic- 
tation of reason and sense. While many apologetic works leave the reader with the 
impression that the conclusions of an intricate chain of reasoning seem probable, 
here the facts of Christianity are set forth, and the attacks against it passed in 
review; history, not the writer, being in the witness-box; facts, not the writer's 
opinions, stating the issue. The trial is conducted on the stubborn ground of the 
actual, and not in the cloud-land of dialectics. Consequently, the attempts to 
show that Christianity is built upon myth, or owes its existence to the fantasies of 
disordered brains, fall to the ground before the array of facts produced on the 
other side. — Trinity Review, Toronto. 



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Home-Life of Great Authors. 



By HATTIE TYNG GRISWOLD. 
Large i2mo, 385 pages, $1.50. 



The lover of his kind, the reverent student of life, the grateful learners in the 
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The author's womanly instincts have enabled her to see, in the private lives 
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No such excellent collection of brief biographies of literary favorites has ever 
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UPTON'S HANDBOOKS ON MUSIC. 



THE STANDARD OPERAS: Their Plots, Their Music, 

and Their Composers. A Handbook. By George P. Upton. 

121110, 371 pages, yellow edges, £1.50. 

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THE STANDARD ORATORIOS: Their Stories, Their 
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Upton. i2mo, 335 pages, yellow edges, $1.50. 

The book is a masterpiece of skilful handling, charming the reader with its 
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THE STANDARD MUSICAL SERIES. Comprising The 

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The Great French Writers. 



A SERIES OF STUDIES OF THE LIVES, WORKS, AND 

INFLUENCE OF THE GREAT WRITERS OF THE PAST, BY GREAT 

Writers of the Present. 

One of the most notable literary enterprises of recent years. — The Nation, 

MADAME DE SEVIGNE. By Gaston Boissier, of the French 
Academy. Translated by Prof. Melville B. Anderson. i2mo, 
205 pages, $i.oo. 

There has been no such charming account of this charming and celebrated 
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GEORGE SAND. By E. Caro, of the French Academy. 

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MONTESQUIEU. By A. Sorel. Translated by Prof. M. B. 

Anderson and Edward P. Anderson. i2mo, 218 pages, #1.00. 

No 'prentice hands are admitted to this undertaking. The story of Montes- 
quieu's life and work is skilfully told by a well-trained pen. . . . The value of the 
English version contributes largely to the worth of the book. . . . The brilliant 
current of this book makes it difficult to call a halt before turning the final page. 
— Public Ledger, Philadelphia. 

VICTOR COUSIN. By Jules Simon. Translated by Prof. M. B. 

Anderson and Edward P. Anderson. i2mo, 220 pages, Si. 00. 

This monograph on Victor Cousin, his life, and philosophical opinions, is 
exceptionally attractive, not only because of its keen and vivacious observations, 
but also because it is written by Jules Simon. — The Congregationalist, Boston. 

TURGOT. By Leon Say, of the French Academy. Trans- 
lated by Prof. M. B. Anderson. i2mo, 231 pages, $1. 00. 
To one who wishes, at a small expenditure of time, to arrive at a correct 
estimate of Turgot's rank as an economist, or to study in the historical circum- 
stances of their origin the birth of principles which a ce'ntury has tested and found 
firm, we can heartily commend this clear and logical little monograph. — Boston 
Daily Advertiser. 

Other Volumes of the Series in Preparation : 
Voltaire. By F. Brunetiere. Racine. By A. France. 

Thiers. By Paul de Remusat. Balzac By P. Bourget. 

Rousseau. By M. Cherbuliez. Guizot. By G. Monod. 

Lamartine. By M. de Pomairols. Sainte-Beuve. By M. Taine. 



For sale by all booksellers. Sent, post-paid, on receipt of the price, 
by the publishers, 

A. C . McCLURG & co. 



CHICAGO. 



THE BOOK-LOVER: 



A GUIDE TO THE BEST READING. By James Baldwin, 

Ph.D. Seventh edition, revised. i6mo, 222 pages, gilt top, 
$1.25. 



A book of real excellence It is such a volume as we should more 

than once have been glad to place in the hands of persons making inquiries upon 
points like those so judiciously handled here, and which only one thoroughly 
familiar with books and with literature could hope to answer in the best way. — 

The Standard, Chicago. 

If a man needs that the love of books be cultivated within him, such a gem 
of a book as Dr. Baldwin's ought to do the work. Perfect and inviting in all that 
a book ought outwardly to be, its contents are such as to instruct the mind at the 
same time that they arouse the taste ; and the reader who gees carefully through 
its two hundred and twenty-two pages ought not only to love books in general 
better than he ever did before, but to love them more wisely, more intelligently, 
more discriminatingly, and with more profit to his own soul. . . . One might 
open this book over his head and look up into it as into the starry heavens of 
literature. — TJie Literary World. Boston. 

Mr. Baldwin, who is well known as the author of sundry works on literature 
and criticism, has written in this monograph a delightful eulogium of books and 
their manifold influence, and has gained therein two classes of readers, — the 
scholarly class, to which he belongs, and the receptive class, which he has bene- 
fited. "The Book-Lover" is compact with suggestions and wisdom. — The 
Mail and Express, New York. 

" Infinite riches in little room " might well describe the character of this 
elegantly printed volume. It opens with a prelude containing extracts from vari- 
ous authors in praise of books, and follows with chapters on 11 The Choice of 
Books," " How to Read," "What Books Shall Young Folks Read?" "The 
Value and Use of Libraries," " The Practical Study of English Literature," etc- 
. . The volume is designed not only to sound the praise of books and to illus- 
trate the value of literature, but to furnish a practical guide for the purchase of 
books. It also gives several valuable courses of reading and outlines of practical 
study. In no recent volume have we noticed so trustworthy a selection of books 
for the practical use of students in the several departments specified. It is, there- 
fore, a book not only for the book-lover, but a book to make book-lovers, — to 
foster and educate a correct literary taste. It is of convenient size, and admirable 
in plan and execution. We can cordially recommend "The Book-Lover," not 
only to those who love books for books' own sake, but as a volume well designed 
to inspire the regard for books, to plant the passion that grows by what it feeds 
upon, and that finds in books 11 the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and 
greatest of our race." — The Uniz'ersalist, Chicago. 

For sale by all booksellers. Sent, post-paid, on receipt of the price \ 
by the publishers, 

A. C. McCLURG & CO. 

CHICAGO. 



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